The Chameleon
by Airplane
Summary: Everything Rapunzel needed to know about the outside world could be taught by a mechanical chameleon.  Right?  Steampunk AU
1. Chapter 1

"Okay. Here's the plan," Flynn said as he spread out a map on the ground, squinting at it in the firelight. "And don't you dare record this."

It had been a long time since Flynn had a real friend. The only confidants he'd had recently were his business partners, and he could only think to address his companion as such.

Sure, he'd had other acquaintances, courteous bartenders who would lend a sympathetic ear, and affectionate ladies, all laces and fishnets and painted on smiles. And sure he would share what he was thinking with them, but never anything deep or worthwhile, never anything more poignant than his momentary bitching, which he always ended up spinning in such a way as to make himself look better in the long run.

Neither of those relationships seemed like they fit this situation. They felt too contrived for this, too impersonal about some things and too personal about others. Maybe it was because the people that flickered in and out of his life always half expected him to turn on them, that he found himself unwilling to place his trust another person.

In fact he still hadn't succeeded in doing so.

His new best friend happened to be a chameleon.

It was about the length of his hand, all bronze fittings and clicking gears. Its large, glass eyes would swivel and jerk in such a way as to make Flynn feel nauseous, and when it was upset it made a little noise that went "tik tik tik tik tik."

It was rare to spot a chameleon. They were designed to blend in, to be discreet, to spy. It was even more rare for one to allow you to look at it and handle it and talk to it.

There were rumors that nobles and wealthy businessmen used chameleons to spy on their rivals, to deliver messages, and even on occasion to assassinate. People said that the royal air force had a small army of them for espionage and intelligence gathering.

So finding this one lazing in his satchel a week ago had nearly given him a heart attack. At first he thought that it was sent by the guards to track him and then report his location. Then he thought that it might be there to kill him and put an end to the chase once and for all. But after a time it became clear that the chameleon was completely unconcerned with Flynn beyond his usefulness as a faster mode of transportation. It either didn't know who he was or didn't care.

"We're here," he said, pointing to a spot on the map. "And tomorrow we'll be at the capital." He pointed again at a small island in the ocean. The chameleon followed his finger with one eye, the other swiveling around the tree line, watching for danger. Or maybe just going through the motions of keeping a lookout. It was kind of hard to tell if it would be any use if a situation cropped up.

"I don't know where you're going after that, but it seems like that's the end of the trip, and you're going to have to find someone else to cart you around." Flynn wouldn't admit that he would miss the little guy when they parted ways, so he glared at it instead, as if this situation was entirely its fault.

The chameleon didn't notice, offering him a happy chirp.

"That's where you're going?"

It nodded.

"Then what?"

It gestured with its tail to indicate a general direction on the map.

"Back the way you came, huh?" He stared at the map again, trying to figure out for the hundredth time where on earth it had come from. There wasn't a settlement in that direction for a hundred miles, and he found it difficult to believe that it had traveled that far on foot before he found it. It was a mystery, and the chameleon was never very specific about it, which made Flynn think it was either a secret, or the chameleon didn't know. He was more inclined to believe the later.

There was something a bit off about it. It wasn't slick and refined like the chameleons in rumors. It didn't reek of wealth like everything else the upper class touched. It let Flynn inspect it and it seemed to like it when he rubbed its head with a finger. It didn't seem interested in any of the rules of discretion that he assumed a proper chameleon on assignment would know. It liked to inspect everything Flynn ate, poking at his food and photographing his mug or silverware with quick, white flashes and a burst of smoke. It recorded short clips of birdsong and played them back at inopportune moments. It liked to climb up his face to sit proudly on his head, only to catch his hair painfully in its gears.

Chameleons were supposed to be masters of camouflage, but he'd only seen this one change color twice, both times when it was startled. It had squeaked, jumped, and turned a deep crimson, before settling itself once more and returning to its usual color of rusted iron and green, corroded bronze. These did not strike Flynn as subtle colors, and the fact that the chameleon was frightened so easily was evidence that it was at least a little bit broken.

It clicked at him, drawing him out of his thoughts and making a gesture that he wouldn't have understood a week ago. _Where are you going next?_

"Away," he said. "I'm fleeing the empire as fast as humanly possible by any means necessary." He grinned down at the chameleon, who did not look impressed. In fact it looked a bit judgmental, as if it knew that he had absolutely no escape plan.

"It is _not_ a suicide mission. I'll be fine. I'm smart. I'll improvise."

It occurred to him belatedly that the chameleon, in all his mechanical, anthropomorphized glory, was not the one that was worried.

He pushed the thought away quickly and cleared his throat, continuing to explain his plan – however vague and problem riddled it was.

* * *

><p>The chameleon grew more and more excited as they approached the city, scurrying from Flynn's pocket to his shoulder, to his other shoulder and back. The lenses in its eyes shifted again and again, as if it was overwhelmed with information and unsure where it should focus its attention.<p>

It recorded the rumble of a motorbike, then squeaked and dove for Flynn's vest pocket when the driver kicked it into gear and took off with a bang and a cloud of thick, dark smoke. It immediately leapt out again at the sight of a pair of elegant ladies with elaborate, feathered hats, quickly taking a photograph before running across Flynn's collar to inspect a horse, decked out in gold bells and bronze plate armor, the emblem of the fifth noble house emblazoned in bright green on its chest.

A man on the corner cried out to catch the attention of passersby, to lure them in to see the fantastical spectacle he promised was hidden under a black, velvet sheet. He pulled the cover away with a flourish to reveal a tank holding a great, white octopus. The gathered crowd and the excited chameleon gasped.

The morning fog and the smoke rolled down the cobbled streets, so that people seemed to rise up out of a mist and then disappear once again. Cable car wires stretched over their heads, implying that their trek had direction and purpose, while secretly hoping to led them astray into the winding thrive of the city. Spotlights shone up into the sky, illuminating great beams in the fog, up into the sky to direct the airships, which drifted past over the rooftops against the background of clouds. Every airship in Corona was gathered that day for the festival of the lost princess, circling slowly in mourning and paying their respects to the queen, before returning to the edges of the empire.

The chameleon was especially interested in the airships, watching them like a cat watching goldfish in a bowl. Flynn thought of moving to higher ground to give the little guy a better view, but he had a job to do and the chameleon might very well bust a gear and explode from excitement if it got a good look.

He was honestly unsure if he should walk slower to allow the chameleon more time to explore, or if he should hurry past the onslaught of novel sights to save the little thing from sensory overload.

He eventually decided that changing his behavior at all for the chameleon was silly. It was just a machine, and who even knew what it thought it was doing.

He made his way across the city to the far side of the island, heading to the docks where the airships were landing one at a time to refuel for the coming year, before joining the rest of the fleet in their slow circling. Flynn's anxiety grew the closer they came to his destination, to the point where he nearly jumped out of his skin when the chameleon on his shoulder twisted wildly and whirred with uncontrolled excitement.

"Whoa! Calm down." He tried to grab it, but it slipped from his fingers and continued its frantic noises, gesturing excitedly at a dark, little shop. "You want to go in there? No. Come on, we're on a schedule, and it's already later than I'd like it."

The chameleon made a rude noise, head butted Flynn once with affection, then leapt off his shoulder to skip towards the store, dodging hurrying feet and dangerous carriage wheels.

He stared after it for a moment. Was it… leaving? Just like that?

"Hey, hold on."

He rushed forward and scooped the little thing up just in time to pull it out of the way of an oncoming motorbike. The driver's curse faded into the ambient noise of the street as they sped away, to be replaced with a happy rumbling from the chameleon clutched in his fist.

It looked irritatingly proud of itself.

Flynn scowled at it. "Fine. This store?" He pointed and the chameleon nodded. "You better not take too long."

The shop was a bit like an apothecary. Close lines of shelves held jars of pastes and powders. It smelled like pepper and overripe fruit, that made Flynn's nose twitch. The chameleon's head swiveled from side to side searching for whatever it was it wanted so badly, and Flynn obliged to walk down each of the aisles to let it look.

He felt really stupid doing it, but at least there was no one but the distracted shop owner to see him pander to a machine.

A squeak brought him up short and the chameleon slithered out of his hand to pick out a jar full of white stuff – paint made from crushed up shells. Yeah, the dumb thing was definitely going senile. Why would a chameleon travel all this way just for a jar of paint?

"I'm not paying for this," he said, lifting it off the shelf and tucking the pleased chameleon into the crook of his arm.

The shop keeper seemed downright bored, even as his only customer of the day checked out, and even as he was paid by a chameleon, who coughed up two gold coins from a compartment under its tongue.

"You get what you came for?" Flynn asked it.

It shook its head happily.

"No? You just bought that because you could?"

It nodded, propping itself up on its back legs to hug the jar.

Flynn blinked at it. "You can't lift that, can you?"

The chameleon thought for a moment, then shook its head.

"So how'd you plan on getting it back to wherever it is you come from?"

The chameleon shrugged.

Did it even have a home? Maybe it was feral, roaming around aimlessly, never going "back" anywhere.

He rolled his eyes, easily slipping the jar into his satchel and plopping the chameleon onto its customary spot on his shoulder. "You're lucky you're cute," he muttered.

The chameleon squeaked.

"Alright," he said, stepping out into the street and resuming his trek as if it hadn't been interrupted. "Now we're really late. If I miss this, I'm never going to forgive you."

The royal guards grew thicker as they approached the docks, proof that they were headed in the right direction – towards the queen and the most valuable treasure in the kingdom. Several guards patrolled around the entrance to the docks, and Flynn slipped behind a low wall, peaking over to watch them.

The chameleon fell silent on his shoulder. It was in its nature to be quiet and sneaky, and even though it wasn't particularly good at either of these, it still liked to try and still got excited about it. It peeked out over the wall too, watching the movements of the guards while staying out of Flynn's way.

"That one," Flynn murmured, pointing at a particularly glass eyed guard, about Flynn's height and build. He dug about in his satchel to grab a plain looking handkerchief and a bottle of chloroform, drenching the cloth and readying himself to pounce.

The guard walked past, and was immediately grabbed from behind and pulled back over the wall, slumping quickly with a muffled groan. Flynn grinned at his mechanical companion, and stripped the guard of his uniform.

"What do you think?" he asked, pulling the cap low on his head to cast his eyes in shadow. "Do I make this look good or what?"

The dark grey jacket had a row of brass buttons down one side and a high collar that hid his dirty vest and shirt. He'd had to roll down his sleeves, and even though the cotton provided a slight barrier against the heat of the wool, he still found himself starting to sweat.

It was definitely the wool. Not nerves. He didn't have nerves. He was fantastic and this was going to work.

Instead of responding, the chameleon started filming him. It did that sometimes.

He decided to ignore it and slung his satchel over his shoulder before standing up straight and planting the chameleon proudly on a bent arm, carrying him like a hunting hawk. He figured it would make him look important, but then again the chameleon looked so poorly cared for that it might give him away. Maybe the guards would think he was an especially renowned chameleon and all the little dings in its skin were battle scars or something. For all Flynn knew, they actually were.

Thus adorned, he marched straight through the gate and out towards the airship. It was a monstrosity, a hundred yards long and five stories tall. A team of mechanics scrubbed down the outside of the gondola, removing a year's worth of rust and grime, scrubbing the metal until it shone bright silver, cleaning the windows until they looked nonexistent. The balloon glowed with a pale, yellow light that flickered as if the ship were on its last leg.

The dock was crowded with people, mechanics scurrying to make repairs, dock workers loading the ship with supplies, new crewmen shipping out for another tour, and tearful families wishing them farewell. Guards were everywhere, there to protect the airship while she was moored and vulnerable, the queen while she was aboard, and the priceless treasure she carried with her.

Flynn had to repeatedly tell himself that he was one of those guards. He had to stand straight, look purposeful, and not be jostled too much as he wound his way through the throng. The chameleon on his arm puffed out its chest and thankfully stopped looking so frantically interested in everything.

A pair of guards, stopping everyone at the base of the nearest boarding ramp, already had their attention monopolized, arguing with a grungy mechanic. They noted Flynn's newly acquired rank, gave a second glance at his chameleon, and waved him through, sending the mechanic into renewed fits of irritation.

Honestly, he hadn't expected it to be that easy. He'd thought that he'd at least have to sweet talk his way aboard, possibly bribe the guards, possibly knock them unconscious. (Because that would have worked.) In fact, he had thought it most likely that he would have been arrested right there, killed where he stood, or at the very least sent away to try to find a new way to sneak aboard.

It was a bit off putting, and Flynn didn't really know how to handle it. The chameleon saved him by ticking loudly when it noticed their lack of progress up the ramp. It craned its neck to scowl at him, wanting to see the ship up close, and Flynn swallowed, straightened his back, and carried on.

The inside of the ship was close and dark. He had to bow his head in order to not hit it against hissing pipes. His footsteps reverberated over metal gratings. Crewmen pushed past him in the narrow corridors, hurrying to get everything ready before the next ship was due to land. They had to prepare the entire fleet that day, and they were on a tight schedule, which thankfully meant that Flynn went mostly ignored.

After making several turns, he found himself off the main thoroughfare, in an unmanned area, where he could pause for just a moment. He dug through his satchel again, pulling out a set of plans and grinning at the chameleon as he spread them out over a waist high pipe.

"We should be… uh… here? Yeah. Here," he whispered. "And the engine room is there, so… we need to go down a deck and then make our way… that direction."

He looked at the chameleon for confirmation, only to find it carefully inspecting one of the thicker pipes.

"Stop that," he hissed, stuffing the schematics back into his bag, plopping the chameleon on his arm, and checking the area again to make sure no one was watching.

It wasn't that hard to find their way once they found a ladder and slipped down to the correct deck. All the corridors and pipes led in that direction, and the hum as the engines were recharged grew steadily louder as they made their way aft. And was it his imagination, or was the hallway getting brighter?

The passageway opened abruptly into a cavernous room of steel catwalks, of levers and dials, of sharp bursts of hissing steam, and of men straining against valves and ticking off tallies on charts. Pipes ran, strung like a spider web to the heart of the room, where a great pillar rose out of the floor, glowing with pale, yellow light that seemed to throb slowly.

The place was swarming with guards. At least two at every exit, six between him and the heart of the ship, where a woman stood, looking strangely out of place in the midst of clanking machinery, sparks, and puddles of oil. She was thin, poised, and well dressed, her eyes closed in concentration, a golden crown glimmering on her head. Her hands pressed against the column in front of her, holding the most valuable object in all of Corona – if not the world - in place.

The battery.

The thing he was sent here to steal.

But how on earth was he supposed to get it? Eyes scanning the scene, he determined that it might be possible to get to the queen, but he would never leave the room alive. There were just too many guards, too many eyes, too many swords and pistols and heavy wrenches.

He needed to wait. Maybe when they left he would have an opportunity. Maybe as they boarded the next ship, or the one after. Maybe he could even wait until that evening when they left the docks completely, when they were groggy from an endless day, when it was darker and the celebrations in the street could hide him. It would be pushing it to wait that long, but perhaps he could make it onto their carriage and-

The guard closest to them shifted slightly, displaying a chameleon on his arm, whose chrome scales glinted defiantly, whose eyes were clear, focused, and dangerous. Its gaze locked on Flynn and it bristled, causing Flynn's chameleon to hiss, the spines along its back rising, its tail poised like a scorpion prepared to strike. The guard blinked down at his companion and turned to Flynn, eyeing first him then his chameleon with a look of mixed confusion and distain.

He felt his stomach drop, and he swallowed down his fear in preparation for a quick lie or a hasty retreat.

"Can I help you?" the guard asked.

But before he could speak his rusty chameleon moved, leaping at the guard from Flynn's arm, striking at his wrist with its tail. The man froze, shivered, then collapsed to the floor, foam bubbling from his mouth.

Flynn stared, dumbstruck for a heartbeat.

Then the royal chameleon hissed out a cloud of steam and leapt at him in a storm of clicking metal and angry ticking. Flynn dodged, diving into action and heading for the queen, as his chameleon snapped off a picture, blinding his attacker with a flash of white light.

Another flash of light. Then another. Then Flynn's hand was on his prize and he was ripping it from the central column, causing the power to stutter and collapse, the light draining away with a low pitched whine. Angry shouts echoed around the room, and he tried to pull the battery from the queen's grasp, but she held tight, staring at him in surprise, the battery burning into his hand. In the semi-dark someone fired off a round, which pinged off the central column, causing both Flynn and the queen to duck instinctively.

She threw a punch at him, which he dodged, then prepared another. And then she stiffened, her eyes slipping out of focus, before she collapsed to the ground next to his chameleon, who blinked up at him as if this was nothing unusual.

Another shot and Flynn was running, the flash of the chameleon's camera blinding the guards even more successfully in the dark. He grabbed for a ladder and swung himself onto a catwalk, running full out for the nearest exit, ducking bullets and clanking across the metal gratings.

"Ascend! Ascend! Take off before he can escape!"

"The engines haven't fully charged!"

"Malfunction in the coolant generator!"

"Pressure building in number four!"

"Stop him!"

He whipped around a corner out into a passageway, pushing past confused crewmen, shoving the power source into his satchel and clenching his burnt hand into a fist. He had no clue where he was going and he felt the deck groan and shift beneath his feet as the airship lifted.

"Shit."

Angry shouts echoed down the hallway, gaining on him with every clunk of his boots. He spun again down a side corridor and practically threw himself down a ladder, then another until he was deep in the bowels of the ship, which moaned and creaked with the effort to once again become airborne. He charged down the length of the ship, skidding to a halt at the sight of the hangar bay doors and one of the small scouting ships, a thin gondola holding a cockpit, with multi-jointed wings and a propeller in the back.

He had a very limited understanding of how to fly it, but it'd have to do. And he threw himself at the lever controlling the doors, which opened with a groan and a squeal of metal on metal and a wild assault of wind. Spinning around, he yanked the scout ship free from the tube used to recharge it, and snapped loose the restraining cables, which whipped back with enough force to leave a dent in the hull. He slipped into the cockpit, flicking every switch until the machine stuttered to a start, then twisted in his seat to yank on the propeller until it buzzed to life.

Just as a wave of guards descended upon him, he threw the throttle and burst forward, dinging the side of the hangar doors on his way out, leaving the guards to stare after him, then scramble to start their own scout ship.

"You said you were going South-East," Flynn shouted, trying to speak to the chameleon latched onto his shoulder over the roar of the engine. "So I guess we're going South-East." Making a wide circle around the airship, they watched it slowly sink back towards the docks, seeming to flicker and die without power.

Flynn watched it go down until his own craft hit turbulence and he had to curse and grab the rudder in an attempt to even things out.

"Please tell me you didn't murder the queen."

The chameleon blinked at him then shook its head.

Flynn didn't quite know what that meant, but decided to assume the best. He didn't want to completely destroy Corona. At least, not anymore than he was already going to.

It occurred to him then that he had done it.

He'd actually done it!

He didn't die trying, and no burly henchmen were going to break his legs for failing!

He couldn't help but laugh as they cleared the city without sign of pursuit, the forest speeding by beneath them, the air once again breathable, even as his heart pounded with adrenaline. "This is a very good day," he shouted.

That was the moment when the scout ship began to sputter, and Flynn realized that if the airship hadn't been fully charged then the smaller vessel…

The ship lurched and they dropped a good three feet before stabilizing again.

The chameleon scurried down his arm, pointing towards the forest just a bit to Flynn's right, as if guiding him to safety.

"You know where you're going?"

The chameleon ticked at him and pointed with more urgency as the little ship jerked again. Flynn pushed the craft faster and they sped on, drawing closer and closer to the forest below them as they lost altitude.

A cliff rose out of the greenery, and he threw all his strength into pulling the control yoke, into forcing every last inch of altitude until they almost – almost cleared it, the bottom of the craft skidding across the rocks, sending the craft wobbling, then spinning, then hurdling down and down and down, as Flynn shouted, grabbing the chameleon to his chest and ducking, and the ship crashed with a sickening crunch into a stream at the base of a lonely tower.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Flynn woke slowly, drifting in and out of a half sleep, warm with fever and muddled by the fog and the pulsing of his head. The thought that he ought to breathe rose up from somewhere, and he gave it a try, regretting it almost immediately as it set off the pain in his muscles again.

Again? When had they hurt before? He could only vaguely remember pain and fear and a soft, scared voice and a rapid ticking noise.

He took bleary stock of himself, noting that everything hurt. His head throbbed and his arm twinged as though it was bruised. His hand stung when he tried to move his fingers, the chill of raw flesh scraping against cloth, damp as though it was oozing or slathered with ointment. He'd burned it, hadn't he? He kind of remembered that. It almost clicked in his mind that his hand had been bandaged, but the thought just missed catching on something solid and slipped away again with a wave of nausea.

Then there was his side. Oh shit, now that he noticed it, the pain was almost overwhelming. He moved to touch it, but his arms didn't respond like they should and he simply flailed for a moment before giving up.

It was dark. Why was it dark? Then he realized his eyes were closed and he opened them to stare off for a while until his senses returned at last.

He was in a coffin – a low, enclosed box that felt stuffy and bed-like. Did that mean he was dead? He couldn't dig up enough energy to care one way or the other.

But then coffins were never lit on the inside, and he could distinctly tell there was a dim light somewhere above his head, where he could never possibly hope to turn and see it.

He tried to push himself up onto an elbow with a groan, only to be stopped by something metallic and rusty pressed to his lips. Opening his eyes once more he found the chameleon directly in front of his face, staring at him, its foot pressed to his mouth to urge him to stay silent, its tail poised and ready to strike.

He took a shallow breath to whisper a question, only for the chameleon to tick threateningly, arching its tail even further back.

After staring at it for far too long, holding his body so still that his muscles screamed in protest, the chameleon clicked open a compartment in its side and eased out a tube on an extendable mechanical arm. Flynn assumed it was yet another concealed weapon, and flinched as the cap on one end popped open, showing a roll of paper nestled inside.

He blinked at it, then with numb, fumbling fingers, eased the note free. He had to squint at it, his eyes fighting to focus, and he held it up above his head to read it in the soft light. The letters were neat, almost as if they were drawn rather than written. Every Y ended in a neat spiral and every period was more like a little circle than a dot.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know how to address this note," it began, its oddness making Flynn feel even more disoriented. "You must stay quiet. You are in great danger here and I fear for what will happen to you if you are found. Please do not make any noise. Stay where you are. You shouldn't move around too much anyway or your wounds may reopen. Lie still and rest, or Pascal will make you. Love, Rapunzel."

He opened his mouth to comment that none of this made any sense at all, but the chameleon hissed again and he thought better of it.

He let his arm flop to the side and closed his heavy eyes with a sigh. The chameleon waited another moment to be sure that he wouldn't leap up and start singing before backing down off his chin to rest on his chest. Flynn absently noted that the chameleon must be Pascal.

What a weird name.

And how weird to give a chameleon a name in the first place.

Groggily, he formed the word to test it out.

_Pascal._

The name - however silent it was - made the chameleon hiss with irritation and a sharp, crisp pain burst against his collar bone as the little monster struck him with its tail, drugging him into silence.

As the world blurred and faded once more, Flynn realized that if the chameleon had a name he must have finally found its home.

* * *

><p>Flynn woke later to the flickering whir of a film projector. He felt much more alert and almost human, telling him that his fever had broken. His body still ached and his side and hand felt miserable. There was a numbness in his finger and lips and the very edges of his skin that told him he was still drugged, probably for the pain. It felt a bit like being cold.<p>

He slowly inspected his bandaged hand, then pushed himself up on an elbow and craned his neck to see the bandage around his middle.

He now realized that the bed he was lying on could be folded up into the ceiling, which was most likely where he had been hidden when he woke earlier. But now it was lowered and the room was open and airy and no longer claustrophobic. It was dark, but less like the close, pitch dark of a tomb, and more a clear, freeing shadow of night. Most of the light came from the projected film on the far wall, the only wall not covered in tacked up drawings and notes and swirling images of girls with long hair caught in a wind and elaborate dresses that draped and ruffled.

Watching the film was a bit surreal in its familiarity. It took him a moment to realize that he recognized it because he was there, the cobblestone streets filled with passing strangers, the carriages and the motor bikes, the buildings that loomed over one another like trees in a forest fighting for sunlight.

It was one of the films the chameleon had taken when they were in the capital, an assumption that was confirmed when the camera panned to the side to show a close, poorly framed shot of Flynn's face. The sight was a bit jarring, and as he watched he could see all the anxious trepidation in his own eyes as the time of his heist drew steadily nearer. He watched the way he spoke to the chameleon. He hadn't realized that he had been doing that quite so much.

The camera turned again, up to the sky, and he watched as an airship drifted between buildings, materializing out of the fog only to disappear once more.

"It looks so much different from the one that crashed. Bigger. And with a balloon. How does it work?"

The question brought Flynn's attention to a girl seated next to the projector. Her back was facing him and she leaned forward excitedly on her stool, soaking up every image, looking about ready to restart the film and watch it again. She pulled a pair of goggles down from her forehead and clicked a set of magnifying lenses into place for a more detailed view of the airship.

She was slightly built, her skin appearing pale in the flickering light. Her long, blonde hair was mussed a bit from her goggles, then fell down her back and out of sight behind a table covered in gears and wires and scribbled notes. Her skirt was bustled up on one side, revealing a mass of ruffled underskirts that were so heavy they were held up with suspenders that crossed over her back and ran around to buckle in front against her ribs. She looked painfully thin, but that might have been from her corset of thick, brown leather that looked a bit battered. Her forearms were covered in grey, woolen cuffs, with ruffles against her wrists that she fiddled with unconsciously.

He cleared his throat and asked, "You've never seen an airship?" and was irritated to find that his voice sounded weak and rough from disuse.

Gasping and spinning around, She snatched a heavy spanner off her work bench, holding it threateningly in both hands, her big, green eyes magnified to enormous proportions by her goggles.

"Whoa," he said, holding up a hand. "Whoa."

She paused a moment to blink at him, adjusting her grip on her weapon.

Flynn swallowed and mustered up a smile for her. "Hi."

This seemed to confuse her.

He put his hand against his chest and spoke slowly. "I'm Flynn."

She didn't move.

"And you are?"

She shifted, then carefully lowered her spanner, reaching up with one hand to shift her goggles back onto her forehead, mussing her hair further. The freckles on her face were just visible beneath a smudge of something like charcoal or grease. Somehow the look worked for her.

"Rapunzel," she said.

Another weird name. No wonder she called the chameleon Pascal.

"Well, it's great to meet you. And… thanks for patching me up and letting me crash here I guess."

"I didn't invite you to crash here," she said, her face falling into a stern frown that looked a bit forced, as if it was a rarely used expression. "Pascal did."

"Ah… Then thanks to Pascal."

She ignored his attempt at humor and continued to frown at him. "If my mother found you here she would kill you. Then she'd yell at me and then she'd move me someplace even farther away. Do you know how hard it was to get you up here? You're heavy."

"Uh… Sorry?"

"And your flying contraption! I just barely got it hidden. Could you imagine how angry she'd have been if she found me out of the tower? Running around in the grass, and the stream… and the little pink flowers…" Her voice turned wistful towards the end and Flynn decided that he had definitely picked the wrong tower to crash into.

"Yeah, that'd be… bad," he agreed for the sake of agreeing.

"Horrible!" she said, snapping back into her rant. "And did you know you talk in your sleep?"

"… I do?"

"You do," she said with a nod of her head. "I was sure you were going to be caught."

"And then murdered?"

"Horrifically."

"Right. Great. I guess I'll just get going then."

He strained to sit up more, only to have the girl rush forward and push him back down. "You can't leave. You're not healed yet."

"Well, I'm clearly not wanted."

She bit her lip slightly, sliding down to perch on the edge of the bed. She was far too easy to read, and he watched as her internal struggle played out across her face - her need to be apologetic against her want to continue to rant about him and the situation in which she found herself.

"You can't leave," she repeated quietly, not meeting his eyes. "Your side is still too gross."

He looked down at it again.

"I had to give you stitches." She reached over and pushed some clunky odds and ends off a thick book on her work bench – a light bulb, a handful of tiny gears, some copper tubing. She readjusted herself on the bed, pushing him a bit to the side to sit next to him and show off her medical text.

If she was so concerned about his recovery, maybe she shouldn't be shoving him.

There wasn't really that much space here. She was yelling at him a second ago and now she was invading his personal space. Because – like everything else – that made sense.

"Mother got me this book to show what kind of terrible things could happen if I go outside." She flipped through the pages, showing gruesome, illuminated page after gruesome, illuminated page. "Sometimes I look at the pictures when I paint. If you ignore the insides that are spilling out, it's a pretty good anatomy reference. And then I studied the flow of blood for some designs I've done, so it's not so terrible, even though it looks a bit frightening. I followed the instructions on how to fix you and I think I did a good job. You're not bleeding any more. And you're lucid again."

"Am I?"

"Yes. But you really shouldn't be moving around this much."

"That's nice and all but- What day is it?"

"Thursday. You've been asleep for _days_. But it's lucky you woke up now. Mother just left this morning."

"Thurs..." Wait. "Oh God!"

He jerked up, hissing as pain ripped through his side. He tried to bite down the stabbing sensation that ran up his neck all the way to his jaw, clenched at his chest, and pulsed down his leg to cramp and twist.

The girl jumped away from him, eyes widened with fear and concern, hands held up to try to pacify him without touching him, suddenly afraid to do so.

"I have to go," he gasped. "Where's my shirt? Where's my- Oh shit! Where's my satchel?"

"Whoa! It's alright! Please. Wait. Just- your shirt is right here, and your vest and your tie and your jacket and your- your bag. See? I had to wash them and I tried to fix the holes but- But you can't- You-"

She froze for a heartbeat before grabbing a glass of water out of the chaos of her work bench and rushing to his side again just as spots started to dance in front of his eyes. She hastily arranged a pillow so he could prop himself against the wall, then helped him hold the glass steady with one hand while he felt his forehead with the other.

Part of him bristled with irritation at being treated like an invalid and having his perfectly arranged hair pushed back from his face. But those thoughts were washed away by the water and his sudden, pressing exhaustion.

His hair was probably already messed up anyway.

She gave him time to collect himself, kneeling on the bed next to him and holding his water glass while he cringed and waited for the spasms of pain to pass.

"You're hurt," she said at last, a quiet, sad quality to her voice. "And Pascal wants you to stay."

He eased one eye open to watch her, then turned to the chameleon sitting on the work bench next to the projector. It's face was as vacant as ever, but Flynn imagined that it looked pleased with itself.

"Does he?"

"Yeah. He says you're nice."

"He's misinformed."

"Yeah. I know… He tries, but… he doesn't know everything." She shifted slightly, as if steeling herself for something uncomfortable, straightening her skirt in an attempt not to look at him. "He says you know more than he does."

"I'm sure that's true."

Her gaze snapped up to his face, her eyes glittering with an excitement that was against her better judgment, which made no sense whatsoever.

"Really?" Why should it be surprising that he was smarter than a mechanical reptile? He must have said some pretty stupid things in his sleep.

"… Yes?"

She scooted further towards him, tucking her skirt under her knees so it puffed out behind her. "Um. So." She looked over her shoulder, back towards the chameleon, who nodded encouragement as she bit her lip.

She rolled her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. "Pascal's been showing me things about outside. He's done a tremendous job and I don't know where I'd be without him. He's brought me so many photographs and recordings. But sometimes I ask about things and he doesn't know. About people and how they act and what they do. Or about how things work. Or how things taste or smell.

"I think he's worried about that. That he's not doing a good job. And he wanted to help because he's a little helper and he just… I don't think he thought it through, you know? He brought you here to teach me, even though he should have known that it was a bad idea, but his heart was in the right place. Don't you think?"

Her ramble ended abruptly and she stared at him expectantly.

He blinked at her. He couldn't tell if everything was so weird because he was still drugged or because the girl was crazy.

"You want me to- wait. Sorry. What?"

"I was thinking," she said, pulling a lock of hair forward and tugging at it nervously.

Flynn realized that it was longer than he first thought. Much longer. Yeah, he must still be drugged.

"Since you're stuck here anyway… I mean, I'm sure I wouldn't be too much of a bother… and you're not really doing anything else…"

"Huh?"

She bit her lip again and then took a quick breath before bursting. "Can you tell me about the outside world? Pascal wants you to. That's why he brought you here."

"Outside world? Outside of what?"

"The tower."

"What- Why don't you just go look?"

"Oh, well," she started pulling at her hair again, then seemed to realize she was doing it and quickly dropped it, only to fiddle with the ruffle on her cuff a moment later. "Mother won't let- I mean, I don't want to leave. It's too dangerous."

"Your mother's holding you hostage?"

"Oh no, no, no! She's keeping me safe from ruffians and trolls and slave traders."

"Trolls?"

"Have you seen a troll? Pascal hasn't seen one. What do they look like?"

"No, I haven't seen a troll. I'm pretty sure no one has."

"Oh." Her shoulders sagged in disappointment.

Flynn was growing steadily more confused. "So when was the last time you left this tower?"

"I went out a few days ago when you crashed in the meadow. I brought you inside and hid your- your flying machine." She made a gesture with her hands that looked a bit like the scout ship's wings, then she decisively bit back a question about it.

"And before that?"

"Uh… That was it." She tried to smile, but ended up cringing a bit. Flynn's vision blurred and he had the momentary, fuzzy thought that Rapunzel was adorable.

Then he shook it off.

"Let me get this straight. You've never left this tower."

"I left three days ago."

"You've never left this tower except for one minor expedition three days ago to pull me out of some wreckage and hide a scout ship."

She nodded.

"And you want _me_ to tell you all about the stuff you're missing because you're locked in here with your crazy mom."

"She's not crazy."

"Amazingly over protective."

"Regular over protective."

"Whatever."

"That's the gist of it," she said.

"Hmm… Tempting, but no."

"What?"

"Yeah, see I've got these guys that I'm supposed to meet and when I don't show up they're going to murder me in the most painful way possible, so I really need to get going. I'm sure I can manage. Thanks for your help."

She pushed his shoulders back again before he got very far.

"You can't."

"Look, I'm sure your little friend can find you someone else. Maybe a tutor or something."

"No. I mean, you physically can't leave. You can't even sit up. How are you going to get to the people that want to murder you? I don't think you can even climb out of the tower."

Flynn didn't like being told what he couldn't do. But she had a point. The weight of his eyelids confirmed that.

"Personally," she said, "I wish you'd never come at all, but now you're here so we'll just have to make do."

He flopped his head back against the wall, squeezed his eyes shut and groaned as he calculated how long it would take to walk to the rendezvous against how long he was going to be stuck here.

Apparently he did this out loud because Rapunzel interrupted him to say, "Maybe I can fix your… scout ship? Is that what it's called? I can work on it while you rest whenever Mother's gone. Once it's working you can get to the people you're supposed to meet in no time. Then you don't have to worry about rushing. Just rest up and tell me stories."

"You can fix a crashed scout ship?"

She shrugged. "I'm good at fixing things."

"Do you even know how it works?"

"No. I'll figure it out."

Flynn groaned again. "Even if you got it fixed up, it's out of power. It won't work."

She considered this, then shrugged again. "Well, at least while you're hidden here the people that want to kill you can't find you. This tower is the most secret place on earth. Aside from the secret places _inside_ the tower that Mother doesn't know about."

Flynn did not find this thought comforting.

* * *

><p>From its spot hidden in the corner of the room, the royal chameleon switched off its recording tape.<p>

After stowing away in Flynn's satchel during the chaos of his escape, it had slipped out when the girl wasn't looking and waited for three days, invisible and silent. If the man had died, the girl would have hidden the battery and the royal chameleon would need the location. If the man recovered and moved on, it would have followed.

Now there was no more waiting. Now there was something to report.

With perfect stealth and camouflage, it eased its way across the room. It went unnoticed in the flurry of activity as the girl asked if the man was ready to be interrogated about airships and the man slumped to the side and declined. It scurried out of the tower, and made a hasty retreat back towards the capital.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

One definite upside to being trapped in the tower was that Rapunzel brought him breakfast in bed.

She seemed excited about it too, eager to show off her cooking skills. She had a little try that set over his lap, on which sat a plate overflowing with French toast and some sliced up strawberries. She'd made him some tea, which he ignored, and placed a tiny little vase in the corner of his tray, where she had set a single daisy made from folded paper.

She sat on the edge of the bed next to his knees, folding one of her legs up next to her. She watched him eagerly, taking note of all his little mannerisms and filing them all away. It made him uncomfortable to be observed so closely, like he was a bug under a microscope.

At least her goggles were once more perched on her forehead.

He was half way done before she could no longer contain her questions. "What do people have for breakfast outside?"

"What?"

"Other people. Normal people. What do they eat for breakfast? I can make all sorts of eggs and toast and pancakes and jellies, but I don't know if that's what most people have."

He shrugged, attempting to ignore the way the question made his spine prickle. "That seems normal enough to me."

"What do you usually like for breakfast?"

He shook his head. "I usually don't eat breakfast."

She looked at him as though he were crazy or deficient. "Why not? Breakfast is great. It's very important to eat when you first get up or you won't have the energy to start your day."

"Well, sometimes you get busy and it slips your mind. It's not all that important."

Rapunzel frowned, then ducked her head. "I guess I don't really know what it's like to stay busy."

Flynn chewed his toast more slowly in the awkward silence that descended over them, and watched as Rapunzel grew more and more agitated, picking at the ruffle on her cuff and biting her lip.

"But- Do most people not eat breakfast? Is it weird to eat breakfast? Mother said that I'm gaining weight and maybe if I stopped eating-"

She cut herself off and turned back to her hands.

Would it be worth it to get into the details with her of the complicated social structure of the outside world? There were people who could have three luxurious meals every day, then there were people like him. People who had to steal some bread and eat it on the run. He wasn't sure he wanted to admit to her that he was on the lower rungs of society. It was kind of an involved explanation and he was starting to feel full and drowsy.

Then again, some explanation was necessary to make her feel better. Not that he really cared, but it wasn't fun seeing her upset.

"Look. Who cares if you have breakfast or not? You do what you want. People who judge you for it aren't worth your time. Forget them. Not worth it."

She considered this a moment.

"And besides," he added, stuffing another fork full into his mouth and speaking around it, "this is delicious. You might convert me into a breakfast eater." Not likely, but she didn't need to know that.

She smiled at him as though she wanted to believe him, but couldn't quite do so.

"Drink your tea," she said, slipping off the bed and taking away the breakfast tray. "It'll make you feel better."

He tested it when she left the room, making a face at the odd smell and bitter taste. It made him groggy almost immediately. When she returned, she took one look at him and decided that this was a perfect time to break out her slides.

"Slides?"

"I have so many questions. I don't even know where to start."

She shoved a high backed armchair that looked as though it was too uncomfortable have ever seen someone sit on it, and was now used as yet another flat surface for Rapunzel to spread out her stuff. With the chair was out of the way, she pulled out a screwdriver, stuck it expertly between slats in the wall and hit some kind of switch, causing part of the wall to ease open with a series of clicks.

"Pascal's been bringing me pictures for _years_ but some of them I can't make out. There've been some changes since he was outside regularly, so he doesn't really know either."

She pulled out a slide projector and heaved it across the room, shoving things on her work bench to the side to make space.

"So Pascal didn't always live here?" he asked.

"No. He came from somewhere. I don't know where. One day he just showed up and now he's my friend. He doesn't like to talk about it and I don't want to pry."

Flynn thought that that might be personifying the chameleon a bit too much, and it was probably that it either couldn't communicate where it was it was from, or it had forgotten. He gave the chameleon a look as it took a seat on his knee.

It blinked at him. There was something strange about its movements, almost as though it was slowly enlarging. He shook his head to clear it, and looked down at his tea with suspicion.

"Drink it all," Rapunzel said absently as she shuffled through about a half dozen cookie tins that were also hidden in the hollow behind her chair. She shifted her goggles down to inspect the miniscule labels she had written across the sides.

"I do want you to tell me about the floating li– the airships. I can see them from my window and I've been wondering but- Oh! Yes! This one."

She excitedly pried open a tin and rummaged around inside, holding slides up to the light until she found the right one with a triumphant grin. All business, she lit a candle inside the projector and slipped the slide into place before dimming the other lights in the room and crawling into a spot next to Flynn on the bed. Her shifting weight made his stomach churn, and he suddenly regretted eating so much toast.

He took another gulp of his tea to try to ease the nausea, and focused on her slide.

The sepia tone image projected against the wall depicted a street performer – a man in a top hat and a cape with a curling mustache. He stood next to an unhappy alpaca decked out in silks and bells. They were set up on a busy street corner, probably charging people for a ride or a photograph.

"Alright," she said, a hint of a challenge in her tone. "What is _that_?"

"It's an alpaca."

"What's that?"

"It's kind of like a llama."

This earned him a blank stare.

"It's like a sheep with a longer neck."

Blank stare.

"You don't know what a sheep is?"

"No."

"It's an animal… All fuzzy… Lives on a farm?"

"Farm?"

"Oh good grief."

"Hold on! Let me write this down or I'm going to start forgetting things."

She scrambled forward eagerly and after a moment of rummaging, produced a pad of paper from the mess on her desk. Shoving an ink well into his hand, she prepared her fountain pen and wrote a neat list - Alpaca, llama, sheep, farm – then looked up at him expectantly.

"Start with farm."

Flynn groaned, then carefully explained that some animals were useful for some reason or another, and when they were you had to keep them somewhere so they didn't wander away from you and get lost. Farms were usually out in the country where they had more space, so seeing an alpaca in town was strange.

She was riveted with this explanation, asking long strings of clarifying questions and making analogies that didn't really make sense to him, but they made her brighten so much that he didn't correct her.

He found himself talking a great deal, his explanations rolling around without ever going anywhere, dragging up more of her questions with each aimless piece of information he spat out. He had no idea why he was going along with this. It wasn't that he was trying to be helpful or because he owed her. For some reason, he just wasn't able to stop talking.

He told her about how some animals gave milk, and she looked disgusted at this revelation. He told her that some animals gave eggs, which she already knew everything about, and she briefly got them off track as she rattled off a list of things she knew about eggs. Then he explained that some animals were eaten, and then had to explain that, yeah, maybe he had left out a few breakfast foods that she didn't know about, and then comment that she would have been better off if instead of a random person to teach her, Pascal had brought her some bacon.

While he talked, she worked absently at putting up her hair, as if she needed something to do with her fingers or she would go mad. Artillery loop after artillery loop passed through her hands, and his attention on the more minor details of livestock was diverted towards awe and disgust at how insanely long her hair was.

There was no way her hair was that long. He must be drugged again.

He told her about sheep and alpacas and she made a face, unwilling to believe that people would actually use an animal's hair in their clothes.

"Look at it," she said, gesturing to the slide. "It's all dirty."

"I'm sure they wash it." He said, rubbing at the kinks that had popped up in his neck. "They get it clean and smelling like flowers and everything before they make anything out of it."

"But-" She looked down at her knotted hair, as if imagining what it would look like as a sweater.

She shuddered and hopped up abruptly to switch slides.

She then quizzed him about a woman in an evening gown, explaining that it was the most beautiful dress she'd ever seen and she couldn't figure out how the bustle worked. Flynn was not the person to ask about this, and she mostly talked to herself, working through the problem while drawing diagrams of folding fabric. It sounded like she had had this one sided conversation multiple times over the years.

He found the way her pen moved across the page hypnotizing.

Then she asked about a police officer on a motor bike, and with a yawn, Flynn told her how police officers chased after criminals, threw them in jail, and then puffed around with their heads inflated. She was impressed and confused that there were people outside who regularly made an attempt to put a stop to the cruel actions of ruffians and thugs, and he had to set her straight that the police were a bunch of jerks. This seemed more reasonable to her, and she nodded in understanding before telling him that she was really asking about the motorbike.

Did he think she could make one? If she moved some furniture around she might have room for it. How fast did it go? How quickly could it turn? Would it leave tracks on the floor?

His words began to slur and his head swum. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes closed, finding it hard to open them again. The pain in his side had dulled and spread to an ache that consumed most of his chest.

Explaining this crap to her was more draining than it should have been.

He trailed off mid sentence without noticing he had done so and a worry line appeared between Rapunzel's eyebrows.

"You don't look good," she said.

"What?"

"You're pale."

"Am not," he muttered, not bothering to open his eyes and scowl at her, or even lift his head from its place propped against the wall. It wasn't a comfortable position, but he was too tired to try to find something better.

She slid her goggles back down, clicking one magnifying lens into place, and leaning towards him. "I'm pretty sure you are."

"I'm fine. What's in this tea, anyway?"

"Opium."

He peeled open one eye to stare at her and her green, bug eyes, magnified to different sizes, and seeming to glow in the shadows.

"You gave me a narcotic?"

She smiled at him. "It helps with the pain, right? It makes you happy and sleepy, like you're floating."

"You speak from experience?" The sentence was difficult to pronounce and he made a note to use smaller words to not look like a fool. Much smaller words. And no verbs.

"My mother has me drink it sometimes. When I'm in a state and making her hair turn grey with my behavior."

"Huh?"

"She thinks I don't know where she hides it, but I do. She's not very subtle. She says that she won't tell me where she keeps it because if I take too much I'll become an addict and she raised me better than that and she's not feeding my habit." She frowned in contemplation. "She says I'm weak for taking it, but she's always the one that gives it to me in the first place. Weird, huh?"

"Uh…"

"I'm sorry. You really should be resting. I have to do chores now anyway. You take a nap and we'll talk more later. Alright?"

He stared at her, not able to focus on much besides the color of her hair - a nice color.

She smiled and slipped off the bed, fluffing his pillow and easing him back down, blowing out the candle in the projector and leaving him in the dark with a bitter taste in his mouth.

* * *

><p>He woke briefly to the humming sound of a sewing machine, a thick, black contraption that had taken the place of the slide projector. Rapunzel sat up straight from her work, pulled Flynn's shirt off her desk, and inspected a seam on the inside of his sleeve before bending again and resuming the whirring noise of the machine, causing him to sink back into sleep.<p>

There was a voice, soft, but high pitched as though trying to keep the words quiet but still letting a manic fear creep in.

"Why did you bring him here, Pascal? What are we going to do with him?... How are we going to keep him hidden? She'll _know_. She'll find out and-… And what happens when he gets better? What then? We just _let him go?_... No. You did such a good job. We were doing fine without him… Yes, he knows. But every question he answers brings up four more! I don't know how to-… Oh, Pascal. What are we going to do?"

And then there was pain. It grew steadily, building and swelling until it was unbearable. He clenched his teeth and hissed with every inhale, grabbing at his side and squeezing, contorting his flesh to push the pain away and force all the muscles back into the right place.

"Flynn? Flynn? Shh, it's alright. Drink this."

She pressed the rim of a teacup against his lips and he pulled away, taking hold of her wrist and pushing it back.

"No," he growled. Releasing his control of his vocal cords enough to tell her that much also allowed a piteous groan and a series of pants to escape. His grip on her weakened as he fought to control himself again.

"It'll make the pain go away. Please just drink it. You need it."

Swallowing down the pressure rising up from his chest to his brain, he took a deep, shuttering breath and fortified himself to open his eyes and glare at her. The room was dark and her hair was loose and her arms were bare. She wore a thin, cotton nightdress and a look of deepest concern.

"No more drugs," he said, pressing as much rationality and force into the words as he could. "They get me muddled and I'm in a strange place with strange people. Rapunzel, I can't deal with it anymore."

She met his eyes in a battle of who could be more stubborn.

"You'd rather be in pain?"

She had no idea. "I'd rather be in pain."

For a moment she looked like she might cry.

Then she swallowed and placed the steaming teacup on the table. "I'm putting this right here. Whenever you want it, just say so."

He sighed, squeezing his eyes closed again and setting his jaw once more.

After a moment's hesitation, she climbed over him, the movement of the mattress causing his stomach to rebel. Then she slipped under the blanket and molded herself against him, careful not to press against his injuries. She pried his hands free of his side and took them into one of her own, letting him squeeze her fingers through waves of pain without complaint.

She tucked her free hand around his shoulder in a strange embrace and rested her cheek against his hair, holding him as he started to shiver.

"One time, there were the most beautiful flowers growing in the clearing," she said, her voice soothing and calm, lyrical as a song. "I could just barely see them from the window. They were white with a bright red starburst in the middle. It looked like someone had dropped a splot of paint on them and the color spread and seeped through all the flower's veins. It looked like the color was growing and one day the flowers would be completely red."

She stroked her thumb over his knuckles, and he tried to hold back the pain enough to not break her fingers. He needed to ride it out, ignore it, and think about something else. Something like how embarrassed he was for her to see him like this, or how he must look like the least sexy person on earth having her pressed so close without the capacity to make a move on her. He should think about how she smelled like soap.

He thought about how the sound of her voice seeped into his mind like a blot of red color staining little, white flowers as she told her story and murmured "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

The morning came with a feeling of exhaustion that, for lack of a better label, Flynn called comfortable.

He opened his eyes, not really waking because he hadn't slept. At least he didn't think he had, but it was much brighter than it was the last time he looked.

His face was buried against something warm and soft that smelled like sleep and girl. It took a long, thoughtless moment for him to realize that it was Rapunzel's collar bone. She still held one of his hands, although not as firmly. Heavy with sleep, it weighed his own hand down against his chest. Sometime in the night he had wrapped an arm around her waist and fisted his hand in the back of her nightgown, which was now crumpled and damp with sweat. Her hair trailed across them both, draped over her shoulder and his injured side to fall off the bed onto the floor.

He had no desire to move at all.

He couldn't look up to see her face without disturbing her, and now that she had passed out, he should let her sleep. She had been up most of the night with him, telling him everything about her day and the day before and the day before that. She talked and distracted him and never expected a response. When she got tired of talking she sang. When she got tired of singing she talked again.

The pain in his side had lessened significantly. Maybe he'd become habituated. In the night he decided to accept it, embrace it, relish in it. He started this adventure expecting to die, he might as well go out with a bang.

Maybe he was too worn out to really notice anymore.

Maybe he was actually healing.

It felt uncomfortable, and he had the urge to curl in on himself to find some relief, but he didn't want to move. He didn't want to wake Rapunzel or move away from her.

He held his body unnaturally still, and although he'd been in the same position most of the night, consciously deciding to stay put made him feel antsy almost immediately. His muscles tensed and his desire to shift around grew stronger by the moment.

His side stung with every inhale, and he tried to make his breathing shallower, only to feel as though he wasn't getting enough oxygen. He gasped, and that hurt like nobody's business.

He stared at the rise and fall of Rapunzel's chest as she slept. It was a nice view. Slowly his breathing fell into sync with hers. Slowly the exhaustion took hold of him once more.

His next conscious thought was that he had to get up. He had to move. He couldn't stay in that bed another moment.

He was sore from lying in the same position for so long, and his muscles felt both twitchy and lazy. Even though he had just woken up, he was already bored to death.

His second thought was that Rapunzel was missing.

He sat up slowly, fighting off dizziness and cringing through the pain. He took a break after sitting half way up, then again sitting up all the way, then again after easing his legs over the side of the bed.

He rethought his plan at that point, then looked down at his pillow and how tragically far away it was. Too late. He'd committed himself to it. No turning back now.

Pushing himself off the bed caused the world to spin around him. The floor was cold against his feet, draining his energy and anchoring him to the spot.

After a moment of blinking and staring off into space, he shuffled towards the door. This was very irritating, because he had never in his life shuffled anywhere. He swaggered. Stupid injuries throwing off his groove.

He leaned against the doorjamb when he reached it, catching his breath and looking around at the rest of the tower.

He'd expected it to look like Rapunzel's room, cluttered and chaotic, covered in scraps of paper and chunks of sheet metal, pens and screws and thread and gears. But it wasn't. The big, circular room was surprisingly tidy, with polished wood floors and bright, natural light coming in through skylights in the ceiling. It was decorated sparingly, an elaborate clock on one wall and bright ivy painted on the handrail of a curving staircase, a mirror and a rocking chair and a table. It seemed as though Rapunzel had confined all her creative energies to her room.

She sat at the table, playing a quiet game with the chameleon. It took her a moment to notice him, at which point he adjusted his posture into something more casual and less pathetic, much to the protests of his many injuries.

"What are you doing up?" She bounced out of her chair and hurried towards him anxiously.

"Oh, you know. I just thought I'd go for a walk."

She frowned at him, slipping under his arm on his good side and leading him to the table. It was too late to try to look cool. She'd already seen him at his worst and there was no way she would just forget about it, even though that would be fantastic.

He slumped into a chair, only to realize that his teeth were chattering for no apparent reason. Rapunzel's hand went immediately to his forehead, and he clenched his jaw and raised a cynical eyebrow at her in hopes she wouldn't notice.

Her hand retreated and he closed his eyes, taking a deep, careful breath. A moment later he found himself wrapped in a quilt.

"Are you hungry? You haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday."

Thinking on it a moment, he considered the possibility that one of the uncomfortable feelings in his stomach might be hunger. But then again, another one was nausea and the nausea was winning.

"No."

She had already disappeared into a side room that looked a bit like a kitchen. "I'll make you some broth."

"I don't really-"

Her head popped out of the side of the door frame, her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed.

"Broth… Yeah… Great… Thank you."

She nodded in satisfaction and disappeared again in a flurry of blonde hair.

He propped an elbow on the table and scrubbed at his face, looking through his fingers at the chameleon, whose eyes shifted with a jerk to focus on him.

"Hey. How's your day going?"

The chameleon blinked, then ticked at him, sounding as though its gears had stuck on something.

Flynn found he didn't have the energy to figure out what it was trying to say.

Rapunzel returned to set a bowl of steaming liquid in front of him, complete with an embroidered cloth napkin and a glass of water. A single whiff of the broth made his stomach churn dangerously, and he pushed it as far away as he could without catching Rapunzel's attention.

She might force feed him if she realized he wasn't eating.

He watched her and Pascal as he tried to figure out the rules to their game and not fall asleep at the table. They had a stack of uniform, metal bricks that formed a small tower. Then they took turns removing bricks then placing them on the top of the stack, causing the tower to slowly grow taller, but more unstable.

She would roll her cuff out of the way, then press a brick forward with one finger, to pull it carefully from the other side. Then Pascal would take a brick, slowly extending his tail with the smallest of high pitched whines. And back and forth.

Occasionally the tower would sway – always on Pascal's turn – and Rapunzel would grin, her eyebrows raising up to her goggles.

Then every so often she would turn away from the game to sketch something on a pad of paper. They looked like designs for some sort of machine. As she was lost in her work, Pascal would finish his turn then wait patiently for her to finish drawing, getting her idea down, running it through either to its conclusion or until she hit a snag.

"What are you working on?"

"What?" Her head snapped up and one of her hands moved immediately to cover her work.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're sketching something. What is it?"

"Oh. Nothing."

"Nothing?"

She gave him one of her smile-cringes and chirped, "Yup."

Clearly not buying it, he sat and stared at her until her fake smile faded and her shoulders dropped.

"I'm _supposed_ to be working on a watch design. Someone ordered one – someone very important, Mother says - and I need to have at least a design when she gets back to show I haven't been slacking."

"That's what you do? Make watches?"

"Mmhmm. I make them and Mother sells them. People started asking her for specific things so now I have to make those."

"What kind of specific things?"

"Well…" She flipped back several pages to where she had a photograph and a slip of paper with notes in handwriting different from her own clipped to a page filled entirely with doodles. "This man wants a hunter-case pocket watch with star movements around the outside, an etching of his family on the inside, and a knotted wire chain." She rolled her eyes and dropped the pages, letting them flutter. "That's what _everyone_ wants. It's too much for one watch. It starts looking too busy. But I'm not sure they care. They just want to say they have one.

"I don't want to make the same thing over and over, and it's getting boring. It's hard to do something original when they want you to just make the same thing all the time. I wish someone would ask for improved accuracy, or for it to be quieter or tick out a little song."

Pascal promptly made a little series of clicks that came very close to forming a melody.

"Like that! Oh, Pascal, you're so clever!" Plucking it up in cupped hands, she nuzzled her wrinkled nose against the chameleon's forehead.

She sighed, lowering Pascal. "But what I really want to make is a watch that doesn't need to be wound every day."

"You can do that?"

Her eyes lit with excitement. "I don't know! That's the exciting part. It's a challenge. See? I've been working on designs for a perpetual motion machine – for a clock you wouldn't have to wind. I feel like I'm close, but I'm not quite there yet. Something's missing." She held up her pad of paper so he could see, but it might as well have been written in Greek for all the sense it made.

She frowned, then pushed the pad away, turning back to her tower of little bricks. "Do you want to play?"

"Nah. I'm good. You knock yourself out." His hands were shaking too much to even attempt it.

"What kind of games do you play?"

"Uh, I don't know. Mostly cards."

She paused to look up at him, her finger poised to remove a brick. "Cards?"

"Yeah, they're like… uh…"

"Business cards. I know what those are." She sprang up and left before he could correct her, her hair dragging behind on the floor.

It keep dragging.

And keep dragging.

She returned with a box stuffed with business cards and slid back into her seat with a smug grin.

"Your hair," he said, taking a good look at it for the first time.

Her hand froze half way through pulling out a single card. Her eyes widened, then snapped to his face. "What about it?"

His inspection wandered down to where her hair coiled by her feet. "I kind of remember... But I was really out of it."

"Remember what?"

Something about her voice took him by surprise, something sharp and almost threatening. He turned back to her face, realizing he'd struck a nerve, but not knowing exactly which one.

"It's just so long. I haven't seen anything like it before. I thought I was imagining things."

Her shoulders relaxed slightly and she turned back to her cards. "I'm sure you imagined a lot."

"That's for sure… So, why _is_ it so long?"

"Why not?" she said, brushing him off with a shrug.

"Doesn't it… get in the way?"

"Sometimes."

"Does it get dirty being dragged around on the floor all day?"

She laughed. "I like to keep the floor clean."

"Hmm."

She presented him with a card, effectively changing the subject. "Here. See? Now what games can you play with them?"

They were minimalistic cards, a plain blue border around a single line of text. _Gothel Time Pieces._

"Hey! I know this brand. I've stolen some of these."

"What?"

"Who's Gothel?" he asked.

"My mother."

"She makes watches too?"

"No. Just me."

"Ah. Of course." Because that made sense.

His sarcasm was lost on her as she inched forward in her chair and brought the conversation back to the cards. "What do we do first?"

"First, you need actual playing cards. These aren't going to work." With the card tucked between two fingers, he extended it back.

Her face fell a moment before brightening again. "Can we make them?"

"Uh-"

"What do they look like?" She snatched up her pen and readied herself to write out notes on the construction of playing cards.

"I don't think that's-"

She looked up at him, all big, curious eyes and a little happy smile.

He sighed.

Under his lazy instruction, she threw herself into building her own card deck, spending a great deal of time drawing pictures of the royals and debating with Pascal over which suit was the best.

When Flynn got bored he flicked cards at her, hitting her squarely in the forehead each time, then feigning innocence by pretending to be asleep. Her aim was not nearly as good, but she enjoyed throwing things at him nonetheless.

He started building a house of cards, only to have it collapse almost immediately under his groggy fingers. She watched his little houses fall, be rebuilt, and then fall again, before she attempted it herself, forming a structure three stories tall.

In irritation, he blew on it, only to pull something in his side. The structure swayed ominously.

Then it stabilized.

Her wide-eyed look of suspense eased into a smirk.

In response, he accidently kicked the table leg.

She turned out to be a very bad poker player, which didn't surprise Flynn in the slightest. Every time she had a good hand she would grin, bite her lip, and push her entire pile of washers – which they used as chips – into the pot.

"This is fun," she announced after he took all her washers for the third time.

"You're losing."

"So?"

"…Never mind."

"I made you a new shirt," she said, attempting to shuffle the deck the way he had been doing it. "I'm not sure how it will fit, but it looks about the same as your old one."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Maybe you can try it on after we change your bandage later." She tried to bury the hope in her voice, her eyes darting to his face then away again.

"What? You don't think I'm going to win all the beauty contests wearing this quilt?"

She considered him, narrowing her eyes and looking him up and down.

He smirked at her.

"It doesn't matter what you wear. You'll lose because you smell."

"Maybe you should give me a sponge bath."

"Maybe you should give yourself a sponge bath."

"Aww, but, Blondie, I'm so helpless. I don't think I can manage alone. I need a pretty girl to help me get all lathered up, so I don't keep bugging you with my enticing musky scent."

"Enticing?"

"Terribly enticing."

She held back a giggle, and attempted another bridge, not managing Flynn's even flutter, but not spilling the cards everywhere either.

He leaned forward, dropping his voice and putting on his best smolder, drawing her forward ever so slightly.

"Some even call it _enthralling_."

Biting her lip only held back her laughter for a moment before it burst free, frightening her chameleon into changing color.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Flynn felt much more human again after a set of fresh bandages, a bath, a shave, and a change of clothes. His side looked remarkably good considering that it had been ripped open a few days previously. Rapunzel even removed the stitches, talking the whole time about how difficult it had been to pick a good color of thread that wouldn't look gross. Red? Orange? _Green?_ Gah!

"Isn't it healing kind of fast?" he asked, inspecting the long, ragged scar that was starting to itch.

"Nope," she said. "According to the book you're right on schedule."

He thought that maybe she should read that chapter again. Or maybe she was lying about how long he was out of commission. She was certainly lying about something.

She volunteered Pascal to assist him with his bathing needs, then admitted when he rolled his eyes that Pascal was going to monitor him and not let him out until he smelled better.

Did the chameleon even have a sense of smell?

"You're just hoping he'll film me. Aren't you?"

She shoved him into the wash room, completely ignoring his injuries.

The shirt she'd made mostly fit him. The only problem was that she got frustrated when he rolled up the sleeves, which wasn't really that much of a problem because it was pretty funny watching her try to roll them back down.

They sat once more on the bed, watching a film of a calliope. Having explained what it was and how it worked, Flynn held his own as Rapunzel sang along to the film, attempting to bother him until he corrected her tune.

"Is that right?"

"Yeah, Blondie. That sounds just right."

"What about like this?"

"That's perfect too. You've got a gift."

"Come on, Flynn! Sing me the song."

"I don't remember it."

"Yes, you do."

"I don't sing."

"You're so-"

Whatever he was was cut off by a shrill whistle like the scream of a tea kettle, causing Rapunzel to gasp and scramble to her feet.

"What's that?"

She blew out the candle in the projector, threw several switches to let it roar and sputter to a stop, and hefted it into her hidden closet without putting away the film properly like she usually did.

"Early warning system. Pascal helped me set it up. Mother's home." Her eyes darted about the room, checking for anything else that shouldn't be seen.

She rushed from the room before he could ask another question and returned a moment later with a basket that she deposited on the bed next to him.

"This is the mother that's going to kill me?"

"Yes. So stay put and be quiet."

She climbed up on the bed and reached up into the ceiling, pulling down a set of spring loaded, purple drapes with swirling silver figures painted on them. Flynn reached out and took hold of her ankle to keep her from toppling over as she fought with them until they lowered just a few feet from the ceiling.

"What are those? Drapes?"

"Proper beds have drapes," she snapped. "Mother's bed has drapes. Why shouldn't mine?"

He held up a hand and bowed his head in surrender, as she mumbled about how he should be more grateful and secured the screens into the correct place with one final tug.

Hopping off the bed, she took hold of a crank in the wall, winding it to slowly raise the bed towards the ceiling.

She continued ranting at him even as she disappeared little by little behind the curtain. "I'm not folding you all the way up this time. Do you have enough space to slip out if you have to? Oh, it doesn't matter. Don't come out. It's only so you can have a bit more light and feel less claustrophobic. Or for an emergency. Like a fire."

The curtain snapped open abruptly and she glared up at him, pointing an accusatory finger in his face. "If you come out for anything less than a fire, you'll be sorry!"

"Fire. Got it."

"A big one. Not a dinner-gone-wrong fire. It has to be _all consuming_."

"I'm touched that you don't want me to die in a fire."

Her scowl only deepened, then the curtains snapped back into place with a distinct mutter of, "be easier if you did."

A moment later, her hand appeared from under the screen, easing Pascal onto the bed with whispered instructions to keep him company. Or to watch him and drug him if he got any ideas, Flynn didn't exactly hear her.

Light feet slapped the floor as she dashed from the room, and the whistling alarm soon faded to a hiss.

Flynn exchanged a look with the chameleon, fighting off the urge to snort at how seriously Rapunzel took all this. Her face as she glared at him was just too funny. Honestly, her mom sounded more and more like a witch all the time, but would she really murder an injured man who just needed help?

Maybe she would if she kept her daughter locked in a tower forever. But that couldn't be true either, could it? No one actually did that. Rapunzel must be mistaken or over reacting or pulling his leg or something. It couldn't be as bad as she hinted it was.

The alternative was too horrendous to contemplate.

The chameleon looked unamused, but then again, it didn't look like it had any other emotions either. Flynn slipped down onto his stomach, deciding to make himself comfortable if he was going to be there a while, and propped himself on an elbow, rubbing the chameleon's head with a finger.

It seemed to enjoy that.

A call from outside grabbed his attention, "Rapunzel! Let down your hair!" Or something. That's what it sounded like, but that didn't make sense so he probably misheard. Or maybe it was a password or some kind of signal. Whatever it was, it required a great deal of heaving and a long passage of time before her mother made it into the safety of the tower.

"Hello, Mother. Welcome home," Rapunzel said, her voice sounding strained.

Her mother ignored her greeting, just as she ignored anything suspicious about Rapunzel's behavior.

"I have big news, darling. We got _three_ new orders while I was out, so I hope you've been working hard on the watch for Lord Capras."

There was a lilting quality to her mother's voice that Flynn immediately decided to dislike. It was patronizing, chiding, and selfish all at the same time.

Despite her mother's excitement, Rapunzel sounded horrorstruck. "Three?"

"Oh, yes," her mother said absently, moving to a different room where their discussion became softer and more muffled. "One for Mr. Droven, who was _ very_ generous, while I was in town." There was a purr in the words that nearly made Flynn gag. "That's unusual behavior in people, dear, and I'm sure his kindness will only last until he gets his clock. But that's the way it is. Even well bred brutes are still brutes. But you'll make him something extra special, won't you?

"Then one for Lady Amelia. Ugh! I have never been treated so rudely. She had me wait _an hour_ before seeing me. Can you believe it?"

"No, Mother."

"You don't have to work very hard on her order. She doesn't even deserve one of _your_ little trinkets."

The chameleon made the softest of rude noises, and Flynn held back gloating over the fact that now Pascal was being the loud one. The chameleon was right to be annoyed. Flynn was annoyed. Rapunzel ought to be annoyed too, but didn't sound as though she was.

"And the third watch?"

"Oh, don't even _worry_ about that one. I'm sure they'll be canceling their order any day now. _So_ inconsiderate."

"Why would they do that?"

"Dear, take those _ridiculous_ glasses off your head. They're going to become permanently attached."

"Sorry, Mother."

Her mom sighed. "The third order – if you _must_ know – is to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the captain of the guards' promotion next month. But I doubt he'll last until then."

"Why not? Is he sick?"

"No, of course not."

"But if he's lasted ten years, what's another month?"

"The empire is run by criminals. It has been for years. Even _the queen _is a thief. Crime runs rampant. And it's _finally_ catching up with them."

Flynn tried to trade a look with the chameleon, but it had returned to the blissful distraction of having its head rubbed, and couldn't bother to be concerned with this first news of the empire's collapse. A collapse that Pascal had partially caused.

Because it was totally the chameleon's fault. Not Flynn's. Not the thugs that had threatened him into doing it. Not that snotty foreign guy.

It was the chameleon's fault, and Flynn did not feel guilty about it.

At all.

Let the captain get fired. He was pompous and bad at his job anyway.

After a while, Flynn got really tired of hearing Rapunzel's mom talk. "Rapunzel, did you do laundry, like I asked? You know I need to look my best, and I can't do that if I have to wear one of these - ugh - _dresses_." "I'm afraid you've had quite enough sugar, dear. Your complexion is getting a bit blotchy. Hmm?" "Honestly, Rapunzel, I ask so little from you. Is it really so hard for you to accomplish a few simple tasks? I work so hard to make you happy, selling your silly watches and braving all the horrors outside the tower. I don't know why I even bother!"

Every word the woman said grated against his ear drums until he wanted to climb out of the bed, stomp into the room and tell the old bat to beat it. Or stuff something in her mouth to block out her incessant complaining.

A fantasy involving sweeping Rapunzel away from here, rescuing her from her nutty mother, showing her the world, and then-

Pascal bit him. It chose to go for his burnt hand.

Biting down a pained noise of surprise, he glared at the little thing, who glared back up at him. He moved to flick it in the forehead, but it raised its tail and hissed.

And they used to be such good friends.

They shot each other glares until they both got bored, then they moved on to inspect the basket Rapunzel had left them. It was mostly full of snacks, as if she expected him to be stuck there for days. That was not going to happen. If he was still there tomorrow at lunch, he was just going to leave, injuries or no. He'd walk out in the middle of their meal, say "See ya!" and leave. They'd both be too shocked to do anything.

No murdering him. No drugging him. No crazed woman shouting at Rapunzel after he left.

…Or worse.

The chameleon bit him again, giving him a warning look with one eye while the other inspected the ceiling.

_You may have a death wish, but don't drag Rapunzel down with your stupidity._

Flynn blinked at it, then shook his head, wondering how he had derived that warning from the chameleon's unchanging face plate.

He opted to save the food for later.

Also in the basket was a pad of paper, a pen, and an ink well. It looked as though several pages had been torn off the front (Rapunzel had probably already used them), and the first page had a note in her neat handwriting. "Dear Flynn, In case you get bored you can write or draw or read. But you really should rest more. I never get bored when I'm dreaming. Love, Rapunzel."

One of the books crammed in the basket was a botany text book. The other was advanced math.

Rapunzel was nuts.

For a while he tried to read the botany book, but it was dry and every third word was a technical term whose meaning he could only guess. The illustrations were nice if you liked looking at leaf picture after leaf picture after leaf picture.

He played tic-tac-toe with the chameleon, a game with which they were both familiar.

Then he inspected the spines along Pascal's back. They unfurled with a whisk and Flynn used one to slice sheets of paper in half, which amused the chameleon to no end.

He made a tally mark every time Rapunzel's mom said something obnoxious, then got too irritated and took another stab at the botany book.

He had just pieced together what a petiole was, when Rapunzel's mom announced that Rapunzel was giving her a headache and she'd had a long day of providing for her ungrateful family and being unappreciated, so she was going to go take a nap. She got a five minute head start before the soft patter of feet announced Rapunzel's presence.

Her hands slipped under the drapes, followed by her head and shoulders as she hoisted herself upwards. Straightening her skirt, she gave Flynn a grateful smile and slipped into place next to him. She propped the notepad against her knee and wrote, -_How are you doing?-_

_-Best day ever,-_ he wrote.

She smiled in relief, her shoulders relaxing and her eyes slipping closed as if she was just as tired as her mother claimed to be.

Probably because she had stayed up most of the night caring for him while he looked pathetic. It struck him as completely unfair that she should have to worry about him in addition to all the other stressors in her life. In the moment, she looked so fragile and vulnerable… It made things clench in his chest.

When her eyes opened again, they landed on the botany book and lit up with glee. She snatched her pen out of his hand and scribbled eagerly, -_Did you read it?-_

_-A bit.-_

She stretched across him to grab it, flipped to the front cover, and turned two or three pages to land on the dedication. She pointed at it and held it out for him to read.

"To my lovely wife. Without your assistance this book - and my life – would be nothing."

_-What about it?-_ he asked.

She thought for a moment, as if she wasn't quite sure how to put her question into words, as if he should know what she meant without having to say it. Then she took the pen and started to write.

_- It sounds so sweet. Like he really loves her. Like he's a nice man. And his book is so lovely and useful. I don't see how someone who wrote this could be bad._ -

_-Who said he's bad?-_

_-Mother says everyone outside is cruel and wicked.-_

Flynn rolled his eyes. _–Not everyone is like that. You think I'm cruel and wicked?-_

It was a stupid question. He was a terrible person, always had been. He'd cheated and stolen and used people. He was selfish and unfeeling. He'd just committed the worst form of treason imaginable.

But for some reason, he wanted her to say otherwise. He wanted her to think better of him.

She blinked at him a moment, really thinking it over, studying his face in the purple tinged shadows, wrestling with something she didn't want to share with him.

-_No,-_ she said. –_You're kind.-_

She ducked her head and averted her eyes, and Flynn stared awestruck at the words she'd written.

He moved to clear his throat, but stopped himself as it would have made too much noise. He shifted awkwardly instead, and she saved them both by writing again. –_Are you really alright up here? How are you?-_

_-I don't like the way she talks to you.-_

He scribbled it so quickly that it took him a bit by surprise. Who knew that you could blurt things out on paper just as easily as you can while speaking?

She blinked, frowning down at the words, then frowning up at him. He swallowed, realizing he'd thrown them right back into the realm of discomfort.

-_What do you mean?-_

_-Your mother. She doesn't treat you right.-_

Her frown grew more pronounced as her handwriting grew more stern and agitated. –_She treats me very well. She feeds me and clothes me and keeps me safe. She brings me things that I need.-_

_-She treats you like crap.-_

She gave his words that look that was now painfully, comfortingly familiar. It was her look when she didn't understand a word and he was speaking nonsense.

-_Like trash. Like you're not a full person. She doesn't respect you.-_

_-I'm a child and she's my mother. She knows what happens outside and she's older and wiser and she knows best. She doesn't have to respect me.-_

He gave her a look of complete bewilderment, shaking his head in a way he couldn't really control. –_Yes, she does!-_

She frowned down at the paper as if she didn't quite understand, then squared her shoulders and shifted her expression to one of determination. _–You don't know what you're talking about.-_

That hurt, but he ignored it, pushing his point.

_-She's always putting you down. Never gives you compliments. Doesn't it drive you crazy?-_

_-You don't give me compliments.-_

He narrowed his eyes and scowled at her. _-I told you that you made good toast. I told you I liked your singing voice. You're quick and sweet and funny. You work hard. You healed me up so well it's like magic and you bent over backwards to let me stay here. You really deserve to hear some nice things every now and then.-_

A blush crept over her face and she refused to meet his eyes. Finally she said, _-I make good toast, but not good broth.-_

He shrugged, smirking at her when she tentatively met his eyes.

_-But seriously, your mom sucks.-_

She flipped the paper over for a fresh sheet. _-Don't talk about her like that. She gives me compliments sometimes.-_

_-When?-_

She couldn't answer, pulling her lower lip into her mouth.

_-She called your watches "trinkets."-_

_-They are trinkets.-_

He looked at her as though she'd grown a second head. _–Are you serious?- _

Apparently she was.

_-Those are the most sought after watches in the empire. Everyone wants one. They cost a fortune. I don't know shit about watches, and even I'd heard of them.-_

She looked confused, and blinked at him several times, waiting for him to laugh silently and write "just kidding! I don't know what I'm talking about!"

When his expression didn't change she wrote, _–What?-_

He nodded.

She underlined the question.

_-You're kind of a big deal.-_

Still not believing him, she turned to Pascal, who hadn't been following the conversation and couldn't provide her with an answer anyway.

_-That's a lot to take in,-_ she said.

He gave her his most apologetic and pitying look.

_-If it's true, she must have a reason for not telling me.-_

_-Like the same kind of reason she has for not telling you about everything else?-_

_-Yes.-_

_-How's that working out for you?-_

_-Quit being such a know it all.-_

_-I thought that's why I'm here. I know all.-_

_-You're here because you're broken.-_

_-I'm feeling much better now that I have such attractive company.-_

_-You're trying to flatter me.-_

_-Maybe.-_

_-I'm not that pretty.-_

_-Who says?-_

She cringed and didn't answer.

_-Ah,-_ he wrote. _–Her. What, pray tell, does she say is wrong with you?-_

She fidgeted with her cuff for a moment and sighed. _–You can see my faults already. I don't have to spell them out.-_

He didn't really know what to say to that. Yeah, she did have some faults –having too much hair was at the top of the list – but that didn't stop her from being pretty.

It took him too long to figure it out and with a huff she decided to spell it out for him anyway. –_I'm clumsy and awkward and chubby-_

She was about to write more, but Flynn took the pen away from her to give her an incredulous look. _–You're kidding, right?-_

She shifted uncomfortably, then bit down a squeak as he reached out and wrapped his hands around her waist. His middle fingers pressed together against her spine and he stretched his hands until his thumbs brushed against either side of the buckle on her stomach. He pulled his hands back and recreated the circumference of her waist in the air.

_-Not chubby.-_

_-Your hands are big-_

_-Your waist is tiny. Where do you keep your liver?-_

_-The corset makes me look smaller than I really am.-_

He raised an eyebrow at her, and she defiantly raised one back.

His skepticism slid into something more mischievous, and she only had a moment for her eyes to widen in realization before he dove forward and caught her around the waist again.

She tried to wriggle free without making any noise, without fighting back hard enough to hurt him, slapping at his good hand as it darted forward and dodged her attacks, holding the wrist of his burnt hand to keep it clear of both her stomach and her miffed flailing. He pulled her closer, snug against his side and she squirmed against him, arching her back, then curling in on herself, sinking lower in her seat, clasping her elbows to her sides to protect herself from tickling.

The clasps at the front of her corset were like nothing he'd ever seen before, four brass fixtures under her bust with inlaid pieces that pried out and twisted and… Beyond that he couldn't figure it out.

He fought with one for far too long, and she stopped squirming so much, craning her neck to watch him with interest and amusement. Her breath came in deep, distracting pants, and he couldn't help but spread his hand against her side, feeling the worn leather and the warm girl beneath.

She looked up at him an smirked, her head resting against his shoulder, her face so close he could feel her breath against his neck. He pouted at her, which only made her look more smug, and he rolled his eyes and threw himself back into his battle with the clasp with renewed vigor.

There had never been a fastening Flynn Rider couldn't undo. It was a matter of pride. It was about proving that he was right and she was wrong through the use of visual aids.

It was about her lithe fingers circling his wrist, relaxing as if she wanted him to keep going.

Her hands eased forward to cover his own and he tensed for another wrestling session, only to have her interlace her fingers with his, lightly brushing between his knuckles, sending a shiver through his arm.

She pressed down on the clasp, and with a click the fabric eased apart.

They stared at each other, her mussed hair framing her face, her deep green eyes drawing him in, growing heavier, her lips parted.

His hand eased up to the next clasp.

Pull, twist, and press. It was easy once he knew what he was doing, easy once the muscles tightened in him arms, once her eyes slid closed.

Pull, twist, press. The fabric beneath her corset was soft enough to hint at skin.

Pull, twist, press, and her corset came loose, and his hands encircled her waist.

She was wrong. Without the stiff shell of her corset, she was actually thinner. His hands pressed into her flesh in a way that was less scientific and more an excuse to touch as much of her as possible. With every exhale his fingers brushed one another, completing the circle of his hands.

It was sad and it was frightening, and he could hold her in his hands and protect her or claim her. Her pulse quickened against the tips of his fingers.

His thumbs eased up her spine, and she arched, gasping, her face pressing into his neck. His fingers ran unconscious circles against her sides, sparking a fire just below her navel.

He could smell her hair and feel her grow warmer with each passing heartbeat, the feel of her washing over him, wrapping him up and consuming him.

His hands ran down to settle against the swell of her hips, his fingers fanning out across her abdomen, stirring the fire in her belly. Her lips brushed against the skin of his collar bone, not quite a kiss, but the beginnings of an idea. One of her hands griped his arm so he would hold her tighter, the other tangled in his hair to pull him closer, to draw more from him - not quite sure how.

His lips met hers and it was slow and chaste, soft and hesitant, the passion building in his chest and clouding his head without passing into the kiss through tongue or moans or-

"Rapunzel?"

She gasped and jerked away, snatching up her corset and snapping three clasps back into place faster than he would have thought possible. One strap of her suspenders had slipped down her shoulder, and she shrugged them off quickly to hang about her waist, before scooting under the drapes and dropping weak-kneed to the floor, without a backwards glance at Flynn.

"Yes, Mother?" she panted

"Rapunzel?" The curiosity in her mother's voice changed quickly to something stern and biting. "You're flushed."

"Am I?" She shifted uncomfortably and ran a hand through her hair in an unconscious move to comfort herself as the tension pressed unbearably down on her.

"If _this_ is how you spend your time when you're left alone for five minutes it's _no wonder_ you haven't-"

"I was just napping."

"Go make dinner," her mother snapped, "and don't even _think_ about being so vile ever again."

Flynn didn't breathe again until he distinctly heard the sounds of cooking in a different part of the tower.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

It was well past dark before he saw Rapunzel again. He didn't hear much from her either, save for a few demure, muffled responses to her mother's constant insinuations.

When she appeared at last after her mother had gone to bed, she took all the jabs about her laziness to heart and sat at her work bench without even glancing in Flynn's direction. There she sketched and sketched and sketched and sketched, her shoulders sinking lower, her eyes growing heavier. When she finally paused to yawn and stretch, instead of stopping, she pulled several sheets of thick construction paper from beneath a pile of screws and started forming painstakingly precise stencils with a pen knife.

Her tongue barely peeked from between her lips while she worked. Her face took on a look of complete focus, enveloped in a world of her own devising, of ideas and form and invention that could carry her away.

Although he had no idea why, it was fascinating to watch. There was something calming and hypnotic in her movements despite her fatigue. He realized he'd been staring at her through the thin slit below the drapes, without knowing how long he'd done so, and there was something scary and pathetic in that.

Moving silently, he took a sheet of paper from the pile of discarded tic-tac-toe boards and wrote a quick note.

_-Do you sleep?-_

It sounded a bit like a cheesy pick up line and he considered it a moment before deciding that he didn't care. He gestured at the chameleon, pointing at the note, then at Rapunzel.

The chameleon gave him a blank stare.

He rolled up the note and pushed it at the chameleon, only to have it spaz about a bit. It took a step back trying to duck away, its head looping in a circle as if pushed by the note, the lenses in its eyes shifting rapidly.

He gave its side - where he'd seen the storage compartment it had for just such occasions - a hard, frustrated poke. Finally, it got the picture, moving its tail excitedly and extending out the message tube with a gentle creak and a soft pop.

Stupid thing.

He shoved the note inside and nudged it on its way.

He watched through the slit again as it moseyed down to the floor, then across to the table, then up one of the legs, where it seemed to forget what it was doing and looked around at the ceiling with its mouth hanging open.

Flynn slapped himself on the forehead.

Eventually the chameleon came back to its senses and wandered up to nudge at Rapunzel, startling her so much she nearly cut herself. She looked down at it with a smile she didn't feel and lifted her goggles up onto her forehead.

"What?" she whispered.

Pascal took on a posture of someone far more important than he actually was and presented her with Flynn's note as if it was the most valuable object in existence.

She looked confused, as if she had never gotten a note before. She probably hadn't. Unless she sent them to herself. Or if they were to-do lists from her mother.

Unrolling it carefully, touching it only at the edges, she read it through at least three times before sneaking a look in his direction and scribbling out a response.

With a new set of whispered directions, Pascal made the journey back towards the bed, although this time he moved with much more speed and determination.

Rapunzel tidied up her space as much as she ever did. As always, she seemed to get distracted or give up or decide it was good enough half way through.

She pushed herself the her feet and left the room just as Pascal made his reappearance, presenting Flynn with his cargo, and looking very pleased with itself.

_-No.-_

Figures.

It took a while for Rapunzel to return – time he used to gather up everything he and Pascal had strewn across the bed over the course of the evening, shove it back in the basket, and shove the basket onto the little shelf set in the ceiling over the bed. It was clean by the time she slipped back into the room, face freshly washed, teeth freshly brushed, clad in her nightgown and goggles.

It was his intention to be spread out, looking delicious when she arrived, but as she tried to clamber up into the bed while holding an oil lamp, he had to scramble to take it from her before something disastrous happened. He gave her a hand up, which pulled at his side in a really uncomfortable way, making him cringe and look generally unattractive.

He smiled at her, but instead of giggling and picking up where they left off, she bit her lip and avoided his eyes, busying herself by turning off the lamp and plunging them into darkness. With her back firmly facing him, she slipped under the blankets and snuggled up in a little ball.

Okay. So he was moving too fast and getting her into trouble and pushing his welcome and all that. He got it. Feeling up a super sheltered girl while he was still severely injured was probably not the best plan.

He sighed, settling his head on their shared pillow, and after a moment of terse silence, dared to whisper, "Sorry."

He figured she'd shush him, or the chameleon would drug him again to keep him quiet. Instead she rolled over to face him, her hand slowly extending to find his chest in the dark. The tips of her fingers trailed up to his shoulder, his neck, the side of his face, mapping out his form even though she couldn't see him. Her fingers spread to cup his cheek, pressing her palm against his skin, as he found her hip with a hand and guided her closer.

"You were right," she murmured. It was the kind of sound that did not carry, as if the blackness around them stifled everything but her sadness.

"Right?"

"The way she treats me. It's…"

She shifted, holding out just a moment before scooting forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders and bury her face against his neck.

He stiffened. Crying girls were even less his thing than crazy girls. What was he supposed to do?

His arms dragged around her form, offering the comfort she needed, even as his mind faltered.

She had comforted him the night before, so this was just pay back. That's all it was. He owed her so much, and he didn't like being indebted to people. Any small way he could pay it off, any small way he wouldn't owe her later, he would take it.

That's what he told himself as he stroked her hair and held her close. It wasn't anything deeper than that. It wasn't that she seemed to fit in his arms or that he liked the way her fingers brushed the back of his neck.

Or actually, lust was something he could deal with. Lust could be a part of it. Lust, but not anything more emotional. Not anything that eased into his chest with each of her deep breaths.

Pity he could understand too. He pitied lots of people for not being as awesome as he was, for having to stay tied down to one place and a handful of people, for not being free and careless. He felt sorry for her, so he hugged her. Simple as that. Except that didn't make sense either. Pity was his thing, sympathy was not.

"I wish you'd never come here," she murmured. "Then I wouldn't know. Now it's all I can think about."

With a deep breath, he pressed his cheek to the top of her head. "That makes two of us."

She pulled back to look into his face - or where his face would be. And after a moment's hesitation and a moment's groping to map his face again, to find the corner of his mouth with her thumb, she lightly pressed her lips to his.

It was soft and gentle still, and such a small gesture that it was amazing he could fall into it so completely. Every fiber of his being attended to the smallest pucker of her lips, the lightest press of her mouth, the-

With a gasp, she jerked away to leave him jilted and confused, but before he could choke out anything worth saying, she was back in his arms again, kissing him with slightly more enthusiasm.

She sucked him right back in, her head slanted to the side, her hands splayed against his chest, soaking up his heartbeat, consuming him until her abruptness didn't really matter anymore. His fingers trailed up her face, skating over smooth skin, to tilt her chin and cup her face and catch on her goggles.

… That was weird.

He broke the kiss, eliciting the softest of needy mews from her, one he simultaneously wanted to hear over and over, and one that made him want to keep kissing her so she'd never make it again.

He fought the urges away, beating them off with a stick because he just couldn't let this issue go unanswered for very long at all.

"Blondie, why are you wearing those?"

She couldn't possibly see anything. Unless they let her see in the dark. But then why was she staring at him in the first place?

"Mother said that if I kept doing… what I was doing… I'd go blind. I figured that these would help. For protection. You know?"

He blinked at her, then squeezed his eyes shut and groaned.

"You're not going to go blind."

He could practically see her skeptical face, he'd seen it enough. "How do you know?"

"Because I do. That doesn't actually happen."

"Promise?"

"Yes."

She thought on it a moment.

"Would you rather sleep with them on?"

"No," she admitted.

Shaking his head, he reached up and eased the goggles off her face, careful of her hair and all the delicate little lenses. Reaching over his head, he set them next to Pascal, who scooted over to make room with a series of soft ticks.

"Why would she lie about that?" she asked, snuggling back into his chest, pressing her forehead against him as if trying to replicate the comforting squeeze of her headgear. "It's such a weird thing to say if it's not true."

"She's trying to scare you into not having any fun."

"Why would she do that?" It was a question that expanded as she asked it, applying itself to every aspect of her life, settling over them like a thick fog.

It was a question he'd been trying to figure out for a while. Why did she want Rapunzel to stay scared and ignorant? Why did she lie and why did she not want Rapunzel to leave?

There had to be something he was missing, some glaringly obvious, huge piece of the puzzle that would fall into place and shift everything he knew about the girl in his arms.

People weren't this evil without reason.

"I don't know," he whispered. "I don't know."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Although it had taken Pascal over a week to reach the capital, he was admittedly avoiding populated areas. Villages had dogs and dogs wanted to chew on him. Plus he got lost a lot until he decided to have Flynn carry him.

The _royal_ chameleon, on the other hand, was looking for people. Even if he came across a civilian, upon presenting himself, it would be their duty to drop whatever they were doing and bring him to the nearest guard station.

His mission was much more important than anything they could possibly be doing or would ever do in their entire lives.

Luckily enough – as the royal chameleon did not like dealing with the unwashed masses, no matter how necessary – it only took him a few days to locate the nearest royal guard squadron. Since Flynn Rider's daring escape, the entire guard had swelled across the country like angered hornets, searching for the thief, the stolen scout ship, or the battery.

The guards had set up base in the post office of a tiny village, where they bustled back and forth, shouting to one another, relaying messages, and tapping away at telegraphs. A handful of officers stood around a table where a map was spread, depicting the placements of their search parties and the general direction the stolen scout ship was headed. They argued with bristling mustaches and the pounding of fists against the table.

The chameleon let his seamlessly adapted forest camouflage fall, and replaced it with the deadly, silver sheen deserved of its worth and stature.

It didn't matter what they said or what they were planning. Their misguided searching and chaotic practices would adapt and fall into line with the chameleon's report.

It glided up the table leg and marched across the map, pushing aside troop markers and rolling pens onto the floor. In the center of the table, with the group's complete and silent attention, it stood tall, puffed out its chest, and addressed the captain.

With a brief moment of intense smugness and quick series of clicks, it rolled its recording back to the beginning and began to play.

"Hi," said a raspy voice, grainy and slightly distorted. "I'm Flynn."

The guards collectively sucked in a breath, their mustaches bristling to new extremes.

"And you are?" the recorded voice asked.

There was a pause, and then, "Rapunzel."

* * *

><p>Flynn woke to the light of day, the bed back at normal bed height, Rapunzel sitting at her work bench, her complete concentration on her work. After a moment of debating if he should get up or not, he stretched and rolled out of bed, rubbing his head drowsily and taking a seat across from her.<p>

"I take it your mom left."

She jumped at the sound of his voice, her head snapping up so she could blink at him with wildly magnified eyes. He was starting to get used to the sight.

"Yes. You slept very late." She pushed up her goggles and leaned back to peer into the other room and check the wall clock. "It's almost eight thirty."

"Eight thirty. Where has the day gone?"

She nodded solemnly and turned back to her work. "There's food in the kitchen. Do you need me to help you?"

"Nah. I got it."

He made no move to stand, instead watching her as she painstakingly constructed her watch face.

The photograph that she had been given to put in the inside cover was an oblong, staged portrait of a family – stern husband, placid wife, a boy, and an infant, all with blank faces and dead eyes typical of long exposure photographs. Behind them was a painted backdrop of a landscape. An artificial tree framed one side of the photograph, its branches hanging artfully above them.

Rapunzel had covered and recreated the tree out of layered paper, pulling it into the third dimension, giving it texture and life, complete with tiny, delicate leaves set against the illusion of wood grain. She mirrored it on a second oval, where she would place the clock face, so the tree seemed to spread out over both halves of the opened watch, setting the time and the family firmly into the background.

Flynn watched her take the outer most layer of a branch, and transfer the shape onto a sheet of thin metal, carving it away with painful precision. Slowly, piece by piece by piece, she built up the tree again, this time in bronze.

She bent forward as if throwing herself into her work and half hiding her progress from view, then a moment later she would lean back, straightening her shoulders as if her mother were berating her for her bad posture. Her mouth pursed and she sighed more frequently the longer he watched her. Sometimes she would pull her tools away as if she were about to throw them down on the table in frustration. Then she would glance up at him, the movement obvious, magnified by her glasses.

"You really should eat," she said at last.

"I'm not really hungry."

She didn't move for a moment, her hands hovering over her work, unsure if she wanted to continue. Her shoulders slumped and she lowered her tools in defeat, looking up at him with eyes full of embarrassment. "I'm not used to having someone watch me."

He blinked at her. "I'm making you self-conscious?"

She shifted. "A bit. You're distracting."

That was a nice ego boost, and he found himself wearing a cocky smile. He purred, a hint of his smolder showing through, "Sorry." But he wasn't really. Not at all.

His flirting was lost on her, as she was too flustered to notice, and she determinedly explained herself further. "I'm not used to- I don't know if anything I'm doing is right or- or normal. Maybe I'm doing it wrong."

"I'd have no clue if you were doing it wrong."

"Mother doesn't ever watch me like you do."

"She gets bored when you make watches?" That was understandable. It was pretty boring, except for the fact that _she_ was doing it, expect for the fact that it held_her_ attention and therefore must be fascinating.

He didn't normally think things like that, but he was having a strange week.

She shook her head. "I meant all the time. Not just when I'm working. She doesn't ever look as interested as you do."

He didn't really know what to say to that. His life was kind of built around his disinterest, and if he was letting that slip it was bad news.

"You should go eat," she repeated. "I'm almost to a place where I can stop for a while and then we can play."

He raised an eyebrow. "_Play_?"

This earned him a blank stare. "What?"

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head and pushing himself to his feet. "I'll get out of your hair then."

It struck him that given the circumstances, that was kind of an odd expression.

Breakfast consisted of oatmeal, that she had kept warm in a pot over the fire. Oatmeal was never his favorite, but this looked decidedly less mushy and watery than his past experiences. He spooned some into a bowl and grabbed an apple, feeling strange to be shifting through her kitchen when she wasn't there. It was unreasonably tidy compared to her room, which made him seem even more like an intruder. The cluttered room was growing familiar in a way that he didn't particularly like.

And where did she keep her spoons?

He slumped into a chair at the table, stretching out his legs, and leaning heavily on his elbows. He ate slowly, giving her time to finish up her carving or whatever what she was doing was called. The oatmeal was actually pretty good. For oatmeal.

He pretended that he wasn't too impatient for her to finish. He pretended that he didn't care, because he didn't. It's just that it was a bit dull in the tower with no one to talk to, a bit lonely. The wind mumbled and whistled as it beat against the outside of the tower, making it feel empty, hollow.

Not really that hungry, he spent a very long time stirring the contents of his bowl and watching the wall clock tick away. Rapunzel had clearly made it herself as just beneath the clock face spun a disk holding a carved figure of a girl, her hands thrown in the air, her head titled back in gleeful laughter. She spun out of the clock on the left to run past and disappear back inside on the right, her long, blonde hair trailing behind her along with several small birds suspended on thin sticks. She ran around and around in circles, never tiring, perpetually excited.

Flynn wondered if she had ever run anywhere but to the kitchen and back.

From inside her room, her stool made a noise as she pushed it back to stand. He listened to her shuffle around, a flighty sound like the wings of a bird, then she held a mumbled conversation with Pascal that he couldn't quite make out despite how hard he strained his ears or how still he held, his mouth still full of oatmeal.

Then she gasped, a sharp, clear intake of breath full of fear and shock and pain, and Flynn was on his feet, sprinting.

She stood in front of the open closet, his discarded satchel at her feet, the battery clutched in her hands. She stared down at it, entranced, unmoving, her face bathed in green light the color of her eyes, a light that shifted like the surface of a lake, moving and breathing as if alive.

In two strides he had snatched the battery from her hands, releasing her from her trance as the twisted metal bit into his hand again, burning his skin with a soft sizzling noise. He cursed at the pain and dropped the world's most valuable object to the floor with a clunk.

"Flynn," she breathed, blinking rapidly and shaking her head to clear the lingering disorientation. Then she grasped onto the first thing that came to mind. "Your hand."

He ignored her, ignored the pain, and grabbed her own hands, his eyes dragging over them anxiously for signs of her own burn marks. But there was nothing. Just thin, smooth fingers that were cold to the touch and curved slightly in his hands.

It didn't make sense. The battery was supposed to burn anyone who wasn't royalty by blood, anyone but the queen. It didn't make sense, and he flipped through confusion, relief, and fear before landing on outrage. Outrage made sense. It went along with the throbbing in his hand.

"What were you thinking?"

"I- Pascal said he got me a present... He said it was in your bag." She nodded towards the jar of white paint set on the table as her voice weakened with fear and uncertainty. "He got it for my birthday."

"You could have been killed."

"I-"

"You just went digging through my satchel?"

"I wasn't snooping! I- I was just getting my paint."

"So send Pascal to get it for you! Don't just go sticking your hand in. That thing's dangerous!"

"How was I supposed to know that? Why did you have something that dangerous in your bag?"

"That's not the point."

"But," her eyebrows furrowed together, "what does it do? Why did it hurt you?"

"It burns anyone that touches it who is not its rightful owner. It's to keep people from stealing it," he snapped.

This only confused her further and her lips parted to ask another question, which withered and died on her tongue. As they stared at each other, he realized that he was still holding her hands, now clutched to his chest, and - just to avoid her eyes and the conclusion she'd come to at any moment – he checked them again, finding them still unblemished.

He sighed, and in a further act of bizarre softness, pressed a kiss to her knuckles and pulled her into an embrace, the pulsing sting in his hand growing in intensity.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Rapunzel sucked on her lip as if that would keep all the bubbling questions and desperate confusion bottled up. She kept her questions to herself and wrapped Flynn's hand (again), staying silent only because if she did so he would tell her everything. He would owe her then for giving him a moment of peace, for once more giving him the care he needed.

She didn't even rush, as he expected. She rubbed on some more salve and bandaged his palm with neat, careful movements, taking her time to do it properly. In a way he wished that she would rush. For some unfathomable reason, he dreaded having to explain it to her. He was a thief. He was wanted. He carried something dangerous and valuable and coveted by every higher power on earth. And he had brought all of that into her peaceful, creepy world.

She pulled the last knot tight, squeezing his palm with finality, and his stomach churned, his jaw clenching to keep the explanation in.

"Alright," she said, scooting onto the bed next to him in her usual spot for listening to his stories, "tell me what it is."

On the whole, it was a fairly innocuous question. Maybe if they stuck with those they could avoid anything more sticky. Maybe. Possibly.

"It's a battery."

"Battery," she repeated, nodding to show she understood.

But she didn't really. She knew the term now, but she had no idea what a battery was or what it could do, what it meant for the empire or what it meant that it was now sitting on the floor of her bedroom.

What it meant for Flynn.

"It stores power," he said. "It holds a bunch of energy, and you can take some of that energy and put it in other things, and for a while they'll have power too."

Her eyes widened, then her head snapped around towards the battery on the floor. "Really?"

"Yeah."

She hurried off the bed, to kneel down next to it and inspect it better.

"Don't touch it!"

"I'm not."

She lowered her face closer to inspect it, pushing her hair out of the way and giving Flynn a heart palpitation. It was made of some kind of mystery metal that looked like bronze swirled with silver, mixed with oil. Some people said it was forged from a meteorite, but no one really knew for sure. The metal sprawled out to either side in clunky branches and curling tendrils, seeming to simultaneously decay as if melted by heat and acid, and grow organically in spurts and lapses. It seemed alive, moving, and the knowledge that it was holding absolutely still unnerved Flynn as it did most people.

In the center, held in place by gripping fingers of metal, sat a green gemstone the size of his fist. It wasn't really an emerald. Flynn had seen plenty of those. This was different. Unearthly. The color changed as he looked at it and he had no idea if it was real, or a trick of the light or the mind.

It seemed to hum, just below the realm of human hearing.

"How does it work?" she asked.

"No idea. No one does."

She nodded, not stopping her inspection. Actually she seemed more interested, as if she could figure out exactly how it worked if she just tried hard enough. Flynn figured that if anyone could figure it out, it would be her.

"Do you think it could power a watch?"

"Probably. It powers the airships. They can't do anything without a charge."

Her head snapped up again.

"You mean the floating lights!"

Before he could answer, she jumped up again to dig through her hidden closet and pull out her projector, queuing up some film Pascal had taken on his journey with deft movements of her hands, a flick of film here, a snap of a knob there.

"Pascal is very good at reconnaissance," she said as the projector dragged itself into a roar and she flipped a lever to project the film onto the wall. "I've already looked at these while you were asleep. But he could only explain pieces."

She watched the scene for a moment, cocking her head to one side as an airship floated overhead at a strangely filmed angle, giving a view of its underbelly. It took her a moment to pull herself from yet another trance before she climbed back onto the bed to give him an expectant look. Leaning forward slightly, she said, "Airships. Start with those."

He shifted under her pointed attention, the anxiety slowly turning in his gut. "What about them?"

"How do they float like that?" She turned her attention back to the screen as the airship vanished behind a building and the scene jumped to a different vessel, this one approaching nearly head on.

"There's a heater inside that makes the air hot. Hot air rises. So, they fly."

"And that's why they glow? Because there's a fire inside?"

"Uh. Yeah. I guess." He had no idea. Most of what he knew about airships came from grammar school lessons and the diagrams he had procured for the heist. He thought for a moment about showing them to her. It would distract her for a while. He wouldn't have to explain any more. Maybe with the diagrams she would build her own airship, find a way to power it, and...

He couldn't even guess what she would do then. Go look at trees and find a band of traveling puppeteers. Conquer the continent as the dominant and only air power. Fly to a library and then never leave. Anything as long as she left home.

"What are they used for?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Lots of things. They move people around. They cart stuff places. They police the borders. Sometimes they bomb people."

"What's that?"

"Bombing? That's when they drop explosives on things."

"Why?"

"To be rude."

She looked horror struck. The mythical floating lights from her fantasies turned out to be bent on destruction, and the beautiful sight she had watched from her window every year had betrayed her, exactly the way everything outside was supposed to.

"Well- I mean- No. That was an exaggeration." Mostly. "They do it because Corona's neighbors don't particularly like them and if given an opportunity they would invade without a second thought and steal all of Corona's gold and jewels and massive amounts of fish, then force all the kids into slavery, burn all the parks, and behead the queen."

Rapunzel looked like she might faint. Her eyebrows furrowed and her distressed frown sunk further every second as her fear of the evils in the outside world grew in severity.

"If you believe all that," he added.

"Why wouldn't I believe it?"

"Because... Sometimes people say things that aren't true just to scare you into going along with them."

"Why would they do _that_?"

"I- I don't know. Doesn't your mom do that all the time?"

"No."

"You sure?"

She opened her mouth to argue with him, then snapped it shut in thought, her fingers picking at the lace on her cuff again.

"Look," he said, his voice taking on a clipped edge, his knee bouncing against the bedspread in hopes that he could promptly end this discussion, "Corona's neighbors don't like how the empire has so much more than they do. If given the chance they would try to take the empire down. And that scares Corona into protecting itself. Maybe they go a bit overboard. And maybe both sides of the story are exaggerated and a little skewed. So sometimes it's hard to tell who's right, or if either of them are really right."

She thought for a moment, still fingering her cuff, but with less frantic intensity. "Like... like how you think my mother is mean and she would disagree with you."

"Yeah. Except, I'm definitely right about that one."

She almost smiled.

He cleared his throat. "So. Umm. Does that answer your questions?" He hoped it would. Maybe she'd be to distressed and confused by what he'd already told her and stop her line of questioning, or at least drop it for the time being. Maybe then the bile would settle back into his stomach.

He could feel the walls coming up, growing inside his tightened muscles to block out her curiosity, to block out anything that would make him face the emptiness in his chest and the truth of what was happening to him.

She turned back to the film in thought, after a time murmuring, "They look beautiful."

It felt like a reprieve, not enough to let him relax, but enough that his stomach stopped knotting. "Yeah," he said. "They're impressive. You should see one close up."

Her eyes lit again. "What's it like?"

"Uh. Big? Really big. With lots of people running around."

"How many people?"

"Around a hundred."

"Wow! And they all fit inside?"

"Inside the gondola," he pointed vaguely at the film. "The balloon is mostly empty except for hot air."

"It must be huge!"

"Yeah."

"And why do they only show up once a year?"

"Uh. Well, the charge they get from the battery only lasts a year. So every year they have to come back and recharge."

"And they all come back to recharge on the same day."

"Yeah. The Lost Princess's birthday. They come, get recharged, show their respect by flying in circles, then head out again."

She paused for a moment, picking which of her many questions she wanted answered first. "Why don't they take the battery with them? Then they could recharge and not have to come all the way back."

"Because there's a whole bunch of airships that go to a bunch of different places and there's only one battery."

"One?"

"Yeah."

"That one?"

"Uh..." And there was the tension again. She was poking him, circling closer and closer to painfully sensitive topics, to things he couldn't admit to her, couldn't admit to himself.

"Are you the person that charges all the airships? Tell me all about it!"

He couldn't lie to her. She'd given him an easy out. One he hadn't even thought of himself. One he should be jumping on. _'Yeah,__ Sweetheart. __The__ one __and __only __airship __recharger. __Right __here. __You__ should __be __honored.__ Want __an __autograph?'_ He should go with that just so she wouldn't realize what he was. He should lie and become someone else, someone who didn't have his problems.

He'd done it before.

But he couldn't do it now.

"No," he said lamely. "No, I'm not."

"Oh. Are you holding it for them? Keeping it safe until next year?"

"Not really."

"Then," she shifted, anxious for him to tell her so she could stop guessing, picking up on his stress and hesitancy. She looked up at him through her eyelashes, almost shy to ask the obvious question. "Why do you have it?"

"Uh..."

Part of him screamed to confess everything to her. She was so kind. She listened so well. He wanted her to guide him as the situation spun radically out of his control. She could comfort him the way she did when he was ill.

But she was just a girl in a tower with no knowledge of what to do next. She couldn't help him and he didn't want her to. It wasn't fair to drag her into it.

She was just a girl. But she had bent over backwards to heal him and keep him safe. And the only way he made it this far, through the trip to the capital and the theft itself, was with Pascal's companionship.

And he was just a chameleon.

Rapunzel stared at him, her eyes huge and green and confused and honest.

He could feel the wall tremble, the one he'd built to keep her out, to keep things bottled up.

He swallowed, blinking at her several times, trying to wipe away the image of her concern to replace it with the distrust he saw in the face of every other person he'd ever met.

"Flynn?" Fear crept into her voice, and she reached out slowly to touch his shoulder, to offer comfort.

The wall weakened and crumbled.

Her touch pushed him into speaking, a simple action that snowballed, growing and building, pouring out in a rush he couldn't contain.

"I have it because I stole it. I have it and I'm going to sell it to a little, fat foreign dignitary if he doesn't have his hired muscle just kill me first and take it. I destroyed the entire airship fleet and the empire is going to fall right behind it.

"I never thought I'd be able to do it. Not really. No one did. They all thought I'd die trying. They wanted me dead and I-"

He swallowed, running a hand through his hair, looking at her, pleading with her to forgive him, and to scream at him the way he screamed at himself. He begged her for one final push, for her to make him stop talking.

Her face was unreadable and he quickly pressed his eyes closed and let the rest of his confession flow, his flimsy excuse, his poor justification for his actions.

"I didn't really care if I died or not. It seemed inevitable. Refuse and I get killed. Come back empty handed and I get killed. Do it wrong and I get killed by the guards. Who even cares?"

She just stared at him, not knowing what to say, where to begin. But then there wasn't much you could say to something like that. Besides "get out of my tower, you horrible man."

He was actually surprised she'd waited this long to kick him out.

Biting her lip in uncertainty, she scooted forward ever so slightly and picked the topic with which she should have been the least concerned. "You don't care if you die?"

He shook his head slightly. "Not really."

"But-" She blinked at him, utterly baffled. "But dying is the worst thing that could possibly happen to you and you need to put it off as long as possible."

"If only that were true."

"What about your mother? She'll miss you."

He laughed, a hollow sound that echoed in the cavern of his empty, soulless heart.

She frowned. "But don't you like living?"

"Not particularly. I mean, I've done it all. I've lived it up. Had a blast. Broke the rules... After a while it gets old. It's boring and I'm done with it."

She watched him for a moment as if expecting him to suddenly laugh and say he was joking, then he'd tell her that airships were actually tubby, flying animals.

But he didn't, which just made her confusion grow into frustrated disbelief. "You can't have done it _all_. There's so many things to see outside. And if you've done _everything_ then why don't you know about half the things I ask you about?"

"Hey, it's not _half_."

She gave him a skeptical look.

"More like a quarter. A _fifth!_"

She did not look convinced. "And how can you say that it's boring when you just destroyed an empire? That's not very good, Flynn, and I think you should consider giving their battery back so that all the children aren't sold into slavery, but at least it's exciting."

He stared at her a moment before declaring, "You're crazy."

She sat back in a huff. "I'm not the one trying to die and dragging everyone down with me while I'm at it. That's crazy _and_rude. No. You can't die because I won't let you. I'm not letting you leave."

"Excuse me? No. No no no. I don't think so."

"Why not? Do you have something important to do outside? Something worth living for?"

He rolled his eyes. "You can't keep me here, Blondie."

"Yes, I can. It's safe here. You won't be in any danger-"

"-except from your mom."

"-and you can heal, and rest, and tell me everything about outside-"

"-oh fantastic."

"-and we'll come up with a way for you to return the battery and put the empire right again-"

"-I don't think-"

"-and you won't be able to ever tell anyone where I am."

She nodded definitely, and slipped off the bed as the last of the film rolled through the projector, leaving uninterrupted light projected on the wall, the film tail flicking as it spun around and around the take-up reel. She left him completely at a loss for words.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Rapunzel spent the rest of the day making Flynn play all her favorite games because, "You see? This is fun. If you were dead, you won't get to play checkers. You'd be missing out."

It got annoying. She acted as though she could talk him out of it or change his mind. If she just said the right thing, a switch would flick in his mind and he would realize what a fool he'd been. He too would think that board games were God's gift to imprisoned girls and newly imprisoned thieves.

"It's so great to play with another person. Pascal's good at checkers, but sometimes he gets forgetful and doesn't follow the rules. I wish I could play this game every day with you," she said pointedly, glancing up from her stroking of Pascal's spine to shoot him a look. The chameleon seemed to be having one of its forgetful moments as it stared into space with its mouth hanging open.

Flynn groaned, shifting a checker forward. "Can we stop talking about it, please?"

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to."

"Why not?"

"Explaining why not would be talking about it."

She frowned and jumped two of his pieces.

After checkers was bird watching, and after bird watching was "who can wash their dishes the fastest," and after that she broke out her favorite films of all time, all filmed by Pascal on various expeditions outside, some dating back nearly ten years.

She excitedly pointed out all her favorite moments and expounded upon the greatness of bumblebees up close, and elaborate hats with netting, and one particular archway over the entrance to town hall in one of the little villages. She bothered him until he took out his map and showed her where the town was located and told her everything he knew about it.

She was less impressed with the fact that they had the most gullible constable in the empire than she was with the knowledge that there was another arch on the back entrance to the building.

A few times he caught her staring at the battery, taking a breath to ask a question, but then she would stop herself and turn away, pretending she hadn't noticed it. He thought about moving it, getting it out of the way, shoving it into his bag. But then that would acknowledge that it existed and she would start talking about it again. So they let it sit, as she tried to push the wonders of her little life on him and he tried not to get too irritable with it.

They were well into a game of "hold this yarn for me while I knit," (which was not the best way to prove life was worth living, if you asked him) when the sound of the proximity alarm cut through the air. Her chipper conversation about the many unique features of the sweater she was making halted abruptly along with her knitting. For a moment she stared towards the kitchen and the whistling alarm as if confused by its sound.

"She didn't take very long," Flynn said, shrugging the mass of looped yarn off his hands. His voice pulled her back into the moment, snapping her into action.

"She must have forgot something." She raced out of the room to turn off the alarm and grab the basket she'd prepared for him once more, while he flopped onto the bed and sighed. At least he'd get to take a nap.

"I'm sure she'll leave again whenever she gets whatever she forgot. It shouldn't be that long," she said, bustling back into the room to drop the basket on the bed and start cranking it towards the ceiling.

"Yay," he grumbled.

She stopped cranking and looked up at him with more concern this time than irritation. "Please don't come out, Flynn. Please... just stay there? Just for a little while."

He considered her for a moment, struck by the honest fear on her face. Fear for him.

That in addition to the thought that if her mother did manage to murder him, Rapunzel would have to watch and then her mom might turn her rage on her daughter.

He nodded stupidly, and Rapunzel nodded back at him, reassuring herself, holding him to his word, before raising the bed again.

He was above her head when something kicked him into action. "Hey." He leaned out over the edge before she could make him disappear completely, holding himself secure with one hand grasping the edge of the mattress as the other reached for her face, pulling her into a kiss.

Her warmth crept into him, seeping its way into his stomach to fan out through every nerve. Soft lips pressed tight against his as she held her breath, as her eyes slipped closed. And she pushed up onto her toes to get closer, to pull every ounce of reassurance from him until she had to sink back, this time with the renewed warmth of his company.

She stood there a moment, breathing slowly and heavily, her eyes closed as if reliving the moment again and again, her lips still parted slightly as if unsure if it was over.

She was so pretty. Even with her hair mussed from her goggles.

"Thank you," he murmured.

He wasn't sure why he said it. Until the words were loose, he didn't even realize he felt any gratitude for what she was trying to do. He shouldn't really. Locking him away so he could forever be her encyclopedia was several levels of strange and unhealthy.

But it was true, and he held her gaze when her lidded eyes eased open again.

She swallowed, still stunned and not sure if she should believe him, then nodded and continued cranking the bed towards the ceiling.

He pushed himself away from her and pulled the curtains down to be slightly helpful and give himself something to do. She disappeared behind a veil of purple fabric, and rushed from the room with the hurried sound of slapping feet.

And there he sat, in the claustrophobic dark, trying not to think and listening intently in an attempt to decode all the little sounds from the other room. The floor boards creaked. Her dress shuffled as she moved.

There was no sound of her mother's shouted greeting. But then again, maybe his perspective on the passage of time was a bit skewed with nothing to hold his attention but the wait.

Then she gasped, and a second later she hurried into the room again, hissing, "Flynn! Flynn!"

"What?" His feet hit the floor before he'd even realized he'd moved.

"Shh!"

She grabbed his wrist and pulled him towards the window, pressing her back to the wall as if that would help her to not be seen from the ground. She swatted at him with her free hand until he followed suit, feeling completely ridiculous.

"What is it?"

"Shhhhh!"

As she approached the window, she bent double to hide from view, then dropped to the floor, pressing her back to the window sill, dragging Flynn with her.

There she gave him a look filled with fear, and he gave her a look that said she was weird. Then she pointed out the window, tapping her finger silently against the wall, before craning her neck and slowly pushing herself up to look over the edge and down to the ground below. He followed her, took one look at the glen below, and dove back down, out of view, swearing and pulling Rapunzel down with him.

Assembled below, fanning out into the glen like ants, encircling the tower with military precision, was an entire platoon of royal guards.

"Shit!" he repeated, his voice scarcely above a whisper and raised to an unfortunate pitch.

"How did they find us?" she whispered, pushing herself up again for another look.

He dragged her back down, and ran a hand through his hair. "How should I know?"

"What should we do?"

"I don't know. Let me think a minute."

"You should hide again and I'll tell them you died when you crashed and then give them the battery back."

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Because... Just- No! I'm not going to just hand it back to them."

She narrowed her eyes at him.

"This is not open for discussion. For right now it's mine and you," he pointed a finger into her face, "are not going to give it away."

"Then _you_ should give it back."

"I'm not- Ugg. Just let me think a second. I'll come up with a plan."

"I still say I should tell them you're dead. Or that you left and took the battery with you! Flynn, that could work!"

"And they'll just buy that story, will they?"

She tilted her head to the side. "Why shouldn't they?"

"It's not going to work."

"Hmm. You're right. They'll see me and my hair that way."

"Why do you care so much about people not knowing where you live? No one cares!"

"Yes, they do."

"...What on earth makes you think that?"

"My mother."

He rolled his eyes.

She gasped, spurring him to clap a hand over her mouth despite how there was little to no way they could be heard from the ground. After a moment of silence, where she quieted and there was no sound of an army scrambling up the side of the tower to arrest them, he pulled back again.

"Flynn," she whispered, her voice rising in panic, "what if my mother comes home and finds them all camped out outside my tower?"

"Then I guess you mom will have to face off against the royal guard. Who do you think would win?"

"This is serious!"

"I realize that!"

"Then why aren't you acting serious?"

"Because I'm freaking out!"

"Well, I'm freaking out too!"

"Great!"

"Oh my God, this will kill her," she moaned, dragging her fingers through her hair.

"It will probably kill us first."

"Oh God."

"Rider!" someone shouted from below. "We know you're in there. We've got you surrounded. Give yourself up."

They both froze.

Then Rapunzel pushed herself onto her knees and before Flynn could stop her, she shouted back at them.

"Go away!"

"Blondie!"

He tackled her to the floor, pressing a hand to her mouth again. They lay like that for several frantic moments, unable to hear the muttering from below.

Behind them Pascal began to tick.

And then they heard the sound of a hundred tiny clicks, not quite in synchronicity, the sound of metal chipping into stone.

Dread churned in his stomach as the noise grew louder, more oppressive, as he carefully peered over the window sill to find a sight even more frightening than the royal guard spread out before them.

A hundred royal chameleons were climbing the wall, running in skips and leaps, with whirring, angry gears and tails held poised to strike. They hissed and glinted in the light, deadly and viscous and charging towards them.

Flynn threw the shutters closed, on his feet and shouting. "How do you lock it?"

"The knobs!"

"How do they work?"

"Here." She reached in front of him as the first of the chameleons threw itself against the shutters with surprising force and Flynn braced his shoulder against the wood to hold them back. Another THUD. And another.

Rapunzel's hands skirted over a long string of bolts down one side of the shutter, flicking each lock and setting a complicated set of swirling, interlocked bars into place, each one jerking across the shutter to clunk into a lock on the other side then latch with metal fingers that sprouted out and clung to the lock. The chameleons scrambled across the wood, just inches from Flynn's face on the other side of the door, their feet sounding like hail or a thousand raining arrows.

The final lock clunked into place and Rapunzel darted back, afraid to be too close to their attackers even through the barricade. "The other windows," she gasped, and raced across the room towards the second bedroom. He moved to follow her, but the sounds from outside were splitting in two directions as the chameleon swarm divided, swirling around and surrounding the tower in a storm of angry clicking. Changing directions, he charged up the stairs to outrun the swarm to the window on the landing.

Not bothering to slow, he threw his weight against the nearest panel on the shutter and reached for the other just a a chameleon skidded inside, spines bared, eyes narrowed, steam hissing in a scalding streams. He grabbed for the nearest object at hand, a hefty candle stick, and swung wildly at the machine, hitting it squarely in the face to send it flying back out the window into a long fall towards the ground below. Then a second chameleon was climbing in, and a third, and it was all he could do keep up with them, bashing them over the head.

The closed shutter creaked and started to slide open from the force of several chameleons pushing against it. They started circling around, to come down from above, from the side, throwing themselves into the room where he was lucky to hit them on a wild swing.

From below, Rapunzel screamed.

The stream of machines felt unending and with a desperate roar, he pushed forward, grabbed the shutter and threw it closed, catching one of the chameleons between shutter panels, which crunched and whined, and then blocked the window from closing completely.

Another chameleon flew over its fallen comrade and Flynn whacked it in the side before struggling to poke the broken pile of bolts and metal from the window sill.

The junk fell away and the window closed with a thunk, immediately bursting open a fraction under a new assault. He pressed it closed again, both hands spread wide against the shutters, fighting against the force on the other side.

He panted, and shifted to awkwardly turn the locks, having to hold back the machines a little less with every new click of the barricade.

"Rapunzel?"

But she was there, running up the stairs past him, looking disheveled and terrified, but unharmed. She grabbed for a level on the wall, and jerked it down, and a spiraling system of shutters telescoped across the glass dome above their heads, ticking and whining until finally slamming closed and locking, throwing them both into darkness with a definitive, echoing CLUNK.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

For a moment, all he could hear in the dark was Rapunzel's heavy breathing and the distant, pattering clinks of the chameleons. They seemed much further away now.

Her hiss of pain as she released the lever cut through the room, refocusing his attention back to reality.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Don't move," she said, brushing past him and hurrying away. "You might fall down the stairs."

Of course her years alone in such a confined place meant she could navigate in the dark. She'd probably practiced, blindfolding herself and turning it into a game. He stood still on the landing, feeling foolish for doing nothing after such a strong adrenaline dump in his system.

Twitchy and anxious without an outlet, he was just considering following her, taking the stairs slowly and feeling his way in the dark, when she appeared again, holding an oil lamp and looking pale. The light didn't reach the rafters, and without a visible ceiling, the room felt taller, emptier. The shadows seemed to churn above them, playing tricks on his eyes.

He looked away and joined her at the bottom of the stairs, looking her over more carefully. "Are you alright?"

She shifted, gripping the ruffle of her sleeve more tightly before folding her arm behind her back and turning to march to a different part of the tower as if he wouldn't notice. "I'm fine. But I need help with-"

He grabbed her wrist, pulling her to a stop. Her eyes widened as he carefully turned her wrist in his hands, peeling away the ruffle to reveal a bright, sticky slash across her palm.

He stared at it as a new layer of dread settled in his chest. Amongst the many horrors in a chameleon's arsenal, the most notorious was poison. Every sharp edge on every machine was laced with the stuff.

But then she hadn't collapsed immediately the way all of Pascal's victims had, so maybe she had escaped unscathed.

Or maybe different chameleons had different toxins. Slower acting, but more deadly.

She was looking pale.

"They cut you," he said numbly.

"It's nothing. It happens." She tried to pull her hand away, but he held firm, inspecting it closely before making a decision and dragging her and the light into her room despite her objections. "It's not that bad."

"It's not," he said as he guided her to sit. "Mine's much worse."

Offering her a smile he didn't feel in the slightest, he held up his bandaged hand and waved it a bit.

"You really don't have to."

He shrugged, picking the antiseptic from the mess on her workbench and kneeling in front of her. She stilled her protests as he spread the goop across her palm, massaging it in as gently as he could. It was as if she was holding her breath, staring at him, her fingers twitching from the sting and his nearness and the stress that wouldn't fade.

"How'd you manage this?" he asked, keeping his voice even.

She swallowed. "One slipped in before I could close the window. It was coming at me. It-"

He reached for the dwindling roll of bandage and let her find her voice again.

"Pascal killed it," she said. "He saved me."

"He's a good pet." Flynn reached over to the work bench absently to rub Pascal's eyebrow.

"He's very good," she agreed, her attention wandering back to her hand as he wrapped it in careful, determined movements. He wrapped it the way she had wrapped his own injury, strict and caring and worried yet hiding all the worry in his heart. He let his fingers linger against hers, before he looked up and smiled in reassurance that she'd be fine.

She'd be fine.

She'd be fine even if she looked at him as if no one had ever shown her kindness before, as if she were threatening to explode.

Her fingers gripped the front of his shirt, dragging him forward as her eyes clouded and closed, and fierce, closed lips pressed against his, looking for release from the dark imprisonment and the fear and the loneliness. For a moment he could give that to her. He could distract her. He could give her attention the likes of which she'd never known. He could pull her close and pretend for a moment that they were both normal and safe.

He could give her the illusion of security when she trusted him.

Her hands ran down his arms, squeezing and pressing, as if trying to wring the comfort out of his muscles, until it sunk into her. When she grew too distracted with the process of interlacing their fingers, he had to guide her back, wrapping her arms around his neck. She made a small noise of protest, pitiful and wonderful, before she realized she could cling to him with more vigor, she could grab onto him and the world would stop spinning, she could press herself tight to his chest and feel warm. One hand roamed unashamedly over his back, mapping the musculature and the folds of his shirt, while the other stroked his hair with ever increasing levels of enthusiasm. He could get lost in the movements of her hands.

He drew her closer, leaning back on his heels and pulling her down, a splayed hand dragging up her spine to press between her delicate shoulder blades. Her lips puckered and pushed against his, soft and hinting at a warmth just outside his reach.

The pads of his fingers skated over her cheek, to tilt her head, to hold her and guide her and-

his thumb brushed a nick on her cheek, and she jerked back with a sharp breath, her fingers flying to cover it, her eyes wide.

Easily, he moved her hand away and took her chin between his fingers to inspect the side of her face and the cut high on her cheek bone. She let him do it, her shoulders sinking, easing into his touch.

"It got your face too."

"I think it wanted to take out my eye," she giggled. There was a breathless, hysterical quality to the sound, as if all she could do was laugh or cry.

He pretended not to notice and gathered some more antiseptic onto his fingertips.

"You want to take those off for a minute so I can reach this cut better?" he asked, nodding towards her goggles. He'd learned how much she didn't like it when he touched them.

Another tortured giggle escaped her as she reached up to untangle them from her hair, and hold them in her lap.

And she froze, her face locked in a look of horror and grief, as she stared at a shattered magnifying lens. Her fingers hovered over the glass, scared to touch it and find the sight was true and the loss was real.

She jerked her hand away and made a noise like a question and a whine and a sob.

"Hey, it's alright," he tried, covering her hands with his own. "They're just goggles."

She looked at him like he was crazy and making her cry.

"I mean, they might have saved your eye. That's good, right?"

She pursed her lips with a stubborn look that said she didn't care either way about her eye. Then she looked over his shoulder towards where the glass shards might be scattered on the floor in the other room, as if she thought if she got to the pieces fast enough, she could glue them back together.

Her distress made him sick to his stomach and he focused on her cheek again, spreading a thin layer of salve over the cut, mumbling an apology when she winced.

"I'll never be able to replace the lens," she murmured.

"Why not? You need it for your watches. Your mom will get you a new one."

"No," she sniffed. "I was clumsy and that's why I can't have nice things."

Oh, look at that. It was nearly 4:00 and her mom still sucked.

"Maybe Pascal can get you a new one. Like how he got you that paint."

Despite the fact that the tower was basically under siege, so Pascal couldn't leave, and they would probably die before she had a chance to work on another watch, the thought caused her to brighten marginally. Not much, but enough where she no longer looked as though she would start sobbing. Her bottom lip trembled as she held in all the emotions.

It wasn't really about the goggles. He knew that. They were just a spark that threatened to ignite an entire powder keg when the reality of their situation finally dawned on her.

He passed his thumb along her cheek, tracing the path of the royal chameleon's blade just below her cut and into her hair in some sort of silent reassurance that would surely be a lie if spoken out loud.

"It gave you a bit of a trim," he said.

"Hmm?"

He smiled at her and tugged on a lock of hair that had been cropped at her ear in the attack. It looked a bit odd, but when her goggles were back on no one would notice. Who was there to notice anyway?

He squinted at it for a moment. Had her hair gotten darker? No, that was crazy. It was probably just the poor light.

He shook his head slightly and repeated himself. "It cut your hair."

She snapped back, pulling the shortened strands from his fingers, eyes wide with horror, any cheerfulness on her face vanishing instantly.

"_What_?"

Snatching at her hair, she tugged it in front of her face to gape at the shortened ends.

"No. No no no no no nonononononono."

"Hey, it's just a hair cut."

"Oh God. OhGodOhGodOhGod." She pulled more of her hair forward, checking the extent of the damage, frantically running her fingers through it as if she could pull it into growing again.

He reached to still her hands, only to have her jerk away.

"Look, I know you're attached to it and everything-"

She pulled away from him entirely, pushing herself to her feet, clawing at the bandage on her hand.

"Wait. What are you doing?"

The bandage dropped forgotten to the floor as she grabbed at her hair again, wrapping it around her palm.

And that was too much crazy for Flynn. She was already unbalanced to a dangerous level, what with never leaving the tower and having no social skills and holding him hostage. But her new level of hysteria and her disturbingly long hair sopping up her blood was too much.

He grabbed for her again more forcefully, fighting against the way she squirmed to get away.

"Stop."

"What if it doesn't work? What if the magic's gone? What will I _do_? Oh God, I've killed her. She tried so hard to keep me safe and now I've ruined everything."

She tried to pull free, to clutch at her hair, to pace around the room, to move away from him and her distress, but he held her arms too tightly.

"What are you talking about?"

She couldn't listen, too frantic with terror and shaking in his hands as her eyes squeezed closed to blot out the world and she bowed her head to press her forehead to his chest.

And was she singing now? A hurried, hushed song, cracking just below her gasping breath.

"FlowerGleamAndGlow LetYourPowerShine-"

"Rapunzel-"

Then her hair started to glow.

Glowing.

Light coming down from her head and running down around her face and hand and across the floor.

He shrunk away from where it brushed against him, but he couldn't let go of her arms. Like she was electrocuting him.

"BringBackWhatOnceWasMine WhatOnceWasMine."

The muttering tune fizzled out, the light fading with her voice, and she pulled back, shaking her hair from her injured hand to inspect the gash. A gasping laugh burst from her, high pitched and hysterical.

The wound had disappeared.

So had the one on her face. She rubbed at the antiseptic with the back of her hand as she wiped away tears of stress and relief.

"Okay," she breathed. "Okay."

It was _not_ okay.

Not at all.

"Wha-"

He couldn't form words, numbly hoping that if he gaped at her long enough the world would make sense. Insanity must be contagious.

She bit her lip and looked up at him cautiously, easing her hands through her hair to smooth it down and try to tuck the short piece behind her ear and out of sight.

"Please don't freak out."

"Your hand-" He pointed accusingly, still not as articulate as he would like.

She cringed. "I kind of... umm... healed it?"

"Healed it."

"Yeah."

He blinked at her.

She tried and failed to smile.

"Why'd you let me bandage it?"

"I told you, you didn't have to."

His voice cracked as he said a very pathetic, "oh."

She hesitated, taking a half step toward him. "Are you okay? You look pale."

"You could have told me."

"Mother says that it's a secret. I didn't know if I- if I could trust you."

"And now you can?"

"Umm. I guess so?"

He dragged a hand through his hair. "Okay... Okay. You have magic hair that lights up and heals you."

"And other people."

"Does it get rid of poison? Wait. Other people?"

"What poison?"

"You can heal other people?"

She shifted. "Maybe?"

"Maybe."

"I... Yes. I can heal other people."

"Other people with giant gashes in their sides?"

She shrunk back, hunching her shoulders and dropping her eyes.

"Other people who you drug and then leave them in misery!"

She took a half step away, trying to put the table between them.

"What were you playing at! Letting me suffer like that."

"I- It-"

"You _what_?"

"I..." Her voice cracked and trailed off as she stared up at him with wide, scared eyes. He realized that he had closed the distance between them, pinning her against her dresser, looming over her. "It was a secret," she whispered.

"So you would have let me die."

"No! I didn't! And- and you _want_ to die! How could you want that? I won't let that happen to you."

He threw his arms up. "Oh, of course not! It's _much_ better to be kept barely alive so I can be your helpful, little prisoner."

"That's not it."

"Yes, it is."

"I didn't know what to do."

He glared down at her, her eyes pleading and sparkling with tears in the half light. She fretted with the lace on her cuff, trying to stop her hands from trembling, trying to stay brave and not collapse into sobs or give into the fear.

It was fear of him now.

"How about I make the decision easier?"

He turned away, grabbed a grease smeared handkerchief from her desk and used it to lift the battery, shoving it back into his satchel. He flicked the handkerchief back into the mess of gears, sheet metal, and construction paper, and marched back into the main room.

"Where are you going?" she cried. He could hear her feet as she hurried after him, the thump and hiss as she ran into something in the gloom, then kept moving.

"I'm leaving. Now you don't have to kill me or wait for me to kick it. You don't have to keep me like some pet you have to hide from your mom."

"You can't! The chameleons-"

"Who cares?"

His shout brought her up short, and he paused a moment, seething through his teeth before reaching for the first of the bolts across the window.

"Please," she whispered, and he could hear the tears in her voice. "Please, Flynn. Don't leave me."

He hated himself for pausing. He didn't know why he did. But hating himself was becoming familiar. It felt better than hating her.

His jaw clenched and after a moment's pause he turned away from the window to push past her, back into the bedroom where he tossed his satchel on the floor and collapsed on the bed to brood.

"Don't talk to me for a while."


	11. Chapter 11

As requested, Rapunzel did not speak to Flynn for the rest of the afternoon. After a few minutes of waiting in awkward silence for him to come out of her bedroom, forgive her with a hug, or continue to be angry and shout some more, or tell her something condescending, she snuck in to see if he was still mad.

He was. So she dropped her gaze and plucked up some of her watch making supplies before scurrying back out to the kitchen table to work.

After a few minutes of shuffling and sighing, she turned silent again. He looked up to catch her peeking in at him, half hidden behind the door frame. She wanted to be near him regardless of his mood. That only irritated him more.

"Forgot my pliers," she whispered to Pascal, who had taken up permanent residence on her shoulder. She slipped in and dug through the mess. Then slipped out again to sit at the table and sigh.

He could hear the drum of her anxious fingers even from the bedroom, and he wondered if she was more upset about being trapped by the royal guard or about having angered him. In an attempt to not pay attention the her every sound, he flopped over on the bed and buried his face in the pillow. Maybe he could blot everything out if he held his breath until spots burst behind his eyelids.

Despite the fact that she now had her pliers, she soon gave up on continuing her work. She dug through the kitchen cabinets and told the chameleon in her most carrying voice, "We have enough food up here for... two weeks? Maybe two and a half. And then the emergency stores downstairs. How long do you think those will last? … No, I think longer than that... Mother said those were only for epic catastrophes, and I'm not sure if this is really _epic_, but it's still a bad situation and I'm sure she wouldn't be terribly mad if we _had_ to eat some... Just a little mad... Hmm. Maybe I should save the rest of this oatmeal... Maybe if we can hold out long enough, mother will find a way into the tower. She's never been away for too long. She'll surely find a way to us. She's very persuasive. She'll shoo them away."

She raised her voice, making sure Flynn could hear it. "Maybe Flynn's friends he wanted to meet will come and help."

She waited for an answer that he was definitely not going to give her. After another painful silence, she continued.

"If we could get rid of the chameleons for a moment, we could send you outside, Pascal. Then you could go get help." Or drug all the guards and smash all the other chameleons so Flynn could get the hell out himself. Again, he kept his ideas to himself. "I don't know who you could get to help you, though. I could write a note to mother, but you would have to find her and then you wouldn't be a secret anymore. She might be angry with you... She'd definitely be angry with Flynn. Then with me."

This idea upset her into silence, as if facing her enraged mother would be far worse than slowly starving to death or having the guards capture, imprison, and murder her.

She shook herself and changed the subject. "Do you think they're still out there?" Her voice dropped to a whisper, then raised again when she remembered she was actually talking to Flynn. She scooted closer to the bedroom. "Do you think they can hear us? Maybe they know our plans."

But, of course, for them to know Rapunzel's plans, she would actually have to have some.

"Do you think they'll try to get in again?"

Flynn was certain they would.

"They could get in through the windows if they had a battering ram. Or if they lit it on fire. But we're so high up... That'd be too hard, right?"

It'd be hard. But not too hard.

"And I bet they could get through the roof if they bombed us. Do you think they could bomb us? Flynn said they liked bombing people they don't like."

He'd also told her that they no longer had airships.

"Could they knock the tower over? Maybe if they ran one of those steam carriages into it. Or if they got a big ball on a string like in that film." Rapunzel had been both fascinated and horrified by the wrecking ball film. She had shown it to Flynn as one of her favorites and then told him all about how awful it was that someone no longer had a home. And how far could they make the bricks fly? Far and fast enough to knock down the building next door? Could they knock over other things beside buildings?

"Maybe if they set up cables around the tower and then some wenches on the ground..." She shuffled around through her papers then scribbled something. "Like this. See? I bet we could calculate the tension."

That time she really was talking to Pascal.

They whispered for a while about things Flynn had no desire to understand, then fell into silence. Listening for the sounds of chameleon feet against the outside of the tower, the cranking grind of heavy machinery, or the sound of a full army coming to shove the tower over just with the strength in their arms. Flynn listened too, the silence all the more eerie in the darkness.

"I'm scared," she whispered. She meant it for Pascal again. She meant for Flynn not to hear. "I don't like it when he's mad."

The tremor in her voice made something jerk in his stomach, as though it was being yanked apart by a half dozen fish hooks.

Pointedly ignoring both her and his gut, he decided to take a nap.

* * *

><p>He woke a few hours later, feeling groggy and irritable, his throat dry and his shoulders stiff. It took him a moment to realize that Rapunzel had crept in and snuggled up next to him, curled as small as she possibly could, pressed between his body and the wall with her face hidden against his shoulder, as if that could protect her from the intruders while she slept.<p>

Was she really so lonely as to want to snuggle with him even when he was ticked at her? Even when he was cruel? What did that say about her and her life?

With that in mind, he could almost see why she would want to keep him there, why she would go so far as to sabotage his health. He could almost understand. Looking at the slight frown on her face, at the way her hair draped across her face, at the way her delicate hands held his sleeve, he was so close to forgiving her.

But he couldn't do it. It was too weird and too serious and too soon. He wanted to be angry, and it was completely unfair of her to manipulate him with the tragedy of her life and the tragedy of her pretty face.

Her eyes flickered open, and she stared blearily at him for a moment before remembering herself and jerking away.

"Sorry," she whispered, grabbing for the strand of brown hair and tucking it away so he couldn't see it. "Do you want some water? I- I mean – Pascal? Pascal, do you want water?" She looked around for the chameleon, her eyebrows drawing together as she realized what a silly question that was and how her transparent back-pedaling had failed her completely.

"How much water do we have left?" he asked, rubbing out the kinks in his shoulder.

She paused for a moment and narrowed her eyes, trying to decide if his talking to her was some sort of trick.

"Lots," she said, holding back her enthusiasm to have her conversation partner back with a hesitancy that maybe they were still on rocky ground and he might snap at her again at any second without warning. "We collect it when it rains. It runs down from the roof into a holding container."

He paused. "... So rain gets _in_ from _outside_."

"Well, it's not like it rains inside. It just gets stored and- Oh! OH!" She leaned right into his face to make her question as quiet as possible, even as she started to gather her skirts and her hair to run to check the water stores. "Do you think they can get in that way? Ohnoohnoohno."

She scrambled over him, her feet slapping the floor as she hit the ground, her hands grabbing at her skirts to bunch them up to her knees, out of the way as she ran, her hair trailing behind her, dragging over Flynn. He cringed and pushed it away, shrugging to his feet and following the light from her oil lamp and the glittering trail of her hair.

She stood in a corner of the kitchen, next to a great, wooden barrel, spouting pipes like tree roots that sprawled along the floor and the walls to disappear into the dark as they retreated into other parts of the tower. She had her ear pressed to the barrel, listening for the metallic clinks she imagined a swimming chameleon would produce. She held a finger to her lips even though he'd made no move to make a sound, then moved her ear to the main pipe coming into the barrel from the ceiling. After an extended, painful pause, she checked a level to find it in the proper position and nodded to herself before pulling back.

"I don't hear anything," she whispered so softly that he had to lean close to hear her. "And the flu was closed – the one we have so the barrel doesn't overflow. But I don't know. Could they get in anyway? Eat through the flu?"

She looked up at him with wide, concerned eyes, as if he knew the answers to everything plumbing and chameleon related. Flynn looked to Pascal, who was, as usual, unhelpful. One of its eyes pointed at the floor, while the other inspected Rapunzel's piece of brown hair.

He shrugged, "Only one way to really know," he said, then leaned away from her, quietly taking the lid of the barrel on either side and giving her a look to express his intentions. Preparing herself, she picked up a pot in one hand and a carving knife in the other, bit her lip and nodded that she was ready.

_One_, he mouthed.

_Two, _her shoulders tensed.

_Three_.

And he yanked the lid away with a creaking pop of wood against wood, immediately shifting his grip to use the lid like a blunt instrument and smash anything that leapt from the barrel.

But there was nothing. Just the black surface of the water that sloshed slightly in the wake of Flynn's disturbance. Rapunzel continued to hold her weapons ready, holding her breath, assuming the intruders were attempting to lure them into a false sense of security and that they would rise, dripping and determined from the water at any moment.

The water settled, and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion as Flynn's muscles relaxed, his irritation returning. She eased forward cautiously and poked the surface of the water with her knife before squeaking and jumping back.

"I think it's safe," he said, plopping the lid back into place and crossing his arms over his chest.

She continued to stare at the barrel for a long moment, her eyes shifting up the pipe into the rafters, then out again across the plumbing along the floor.

"What?" he asked. "Disappointed we won't be poked and poisoned to death?"

She gasped as if she hadn't heard him, the sound so sharp and loud that he nearly jumped. Then she grabbed his hand and dragged him out into the main room.

"What on earth are you doing?"

"I have an idea. You have to help me."

"What idea? Why should I help you?"

She rolled her eyes as she kicked a decorative carpet out of the way to reveal a trap door, her hand never leaving Flynn's even as she jerked open the trap door and dragged him down into darkness.

The main body of the tower was hollow, a spiral staircase descending down to the ground. And on either side of the stairs were shelves crowded with boxes upon boxes and barrels upon barrels of provisions.

"Whoa. What is all this?"

"It's for emergencies."

"Like what? The apocalypse?" Was her mom expecting to be under siege?

"The outside world is full of terrible people, and we need to be as self sufficient as possible in case they turn on one another. Or so I can be safe if my mother ever gets _murdered_."

Or so they could hold out if anyone ever found out about her magic hair and decided to storm the tower.

"Here," she said, coming to a stop in front of a series of shelves full of jars of oil. "How much do you think we'll need? If we use it all we won't have any, but if it works we can open the windows again and we won't need it as much."

"Huh?"

She came to a decision without him and shoved three jars into his arms, knocking the wind from him.

"Take these upstairs and then we'll get more."

It wasn't worth it to argue with her, and after three trips they had half the oil upstairs, stacked in the kitchen and enough to fill the rain barrel if she should feel inclined to do so. Flynn wasn't going to take any guesses as to what she was inclined to do.

After messing about with a bunch of knobs and levers at the base of the barrel to disconnect it from the water system, she popped back onto her feet and ordered Flynn to help her move it out of the way. That was a pain, made even more so by the fact that he did most of the work. Or at least it felt that way.

As soon as the water was removed, she dashed off again, leaving Flynn to lean against the counter, catch his breath and wonder at the direction his life had taken.

A series of metallic clangs interspersed with grunts of exertion came from whatever part of the tower she was in. He thought about checking on her or at least calling out, but then he decided against it. He didn't care what weirdness she came up with.

At all.

She returned, broken goggles firmly in place over her eyes, spanner in her hand, awkwardly carrying a great length of pipe in her arms. He moved to assist her, only to have it deposited roughly into his arms so she could run off again and beat on something else. He stood for a second, eyes narrowed after her, before glaring at the heavy pipe, wondering if he should continue to hold it, and then dumping it on the floor with a CLUNK.

After a few minutes of clanking and whispering to Pascal and what could only be described as growling, Rapunzel burst into the kitchen once more, sweaty, grease smeared, and disheveled, holding a device nearly half her size. While helping her to lower it to the floor, Flynn discovered it was also nearly half her weight.

"What is this?"

"The pump for the bath tub."

"Sooo... what's it doing in the kitchen?"

She laughed a little, straining to unscrew the lid from one of the oil jars then pouring it into the cauldron that had held the morning oatmeal. "I'm redecorating?"

"Redecorating. Obviously. Why didn't I see that earlier?"

"Hold this," she said, pushing the half empty jar into his hands before grabbing a second jar and prying off the lid. They stood next to each other for a while, letting the viscous gloop ooze into the vat. It moved slower the less of it there was, mocking him and how long he had to stand there, coaxing oil out of one container and into another. The good news was that the jar got lighter as time went on, and he was able to shift his shoulders into something more comfortable.

Eventually, his jar ran out of oil, at which point Rapunzel peered inside, smiled, and told him to grab another.

After her third jar, her arms got too tired to continue, and she left the exciting job of oil pouring up to Flynn. She decided that her time could be better spent rearranging the mess of pipes, adding pieces into a patchwork of plumbing, directing the main tube from the roof down to the floor, where it turned, trailed just above the floor, and then attempted to attach to the pump. This proved difficult, as to connect with the pipes she had laid down, the pump would have to hover about two inches off the ground, and given its weight, that would prove impossible and then everything would break and be terrible forever.

Or so he guessed.

She disappeared again, returning with her arms full of books about electronics and clockwork and such, which she arranged like a complicated puzzle to lift the pump to the correct height. Flynn grabbed another jar, and Rapunzel ran off to cannibalize more pipe form the bathroom and include it in her monstrosity.

The pipes ran further along the floor, creeping towards Flynn a foot at a time. They curved up at the base of the cauldron, only to take another sharp turn and plunge into the oil. The fluid had grown so sticky and unwieldy that Flynn had to stop what he was doing to help her shove and drag the last piece of pipe into the right place, then hold it for her as she screwed it into place and let the sealant set.

She grinned, stepping back to admire her work with her hands planted proudly on her hips. Smears of grease and oil and glue covered her face and hands and skirts, and she looked so proud of herself that he almost felt bad for having no idea what she was doing.

Almost.

He picked up the last jar as she dropped to the floor next to the vat and lit the fire under it, letting it roar to life before popping back up to fiddle with the gas controls to make the fire hotter, larger, more intense.

Flynn almost immediately started to sweat. He scooted as far as he could from the heating cauldron and the slowly warming oil, while still standing close enough to pour in the last jar.

"Blondie, don't you think this is a bit... reckless?" She was going to burn his eyebrow off. He needed those. He turned the jar upside down in hopes that it would drain faster.

She grinned, and for a moment she looked disturbingly evil. "Yup!"

"... Just as long as we're clear."

She giggled, which was not the correct response, and hopped up onto her tiptoes to peer in at the oil and the bubbles that had started to form on the bottom.

"How hot do you think it needs to be?" she asked, leaning away as the heat coming from the vat caused her goggles to fog over and she had to scurry to wipe them on he cuff.

Seeing as he still had no clue what she was doing, he had no opinion - informed or otherwise - about how hot oil had to be. But then she wasn't really asking him anyway. She was talking to herself, or asking Pascal, who seemed to be able to read her mind (or at least it seemed that she thought it could and it had never contradicted her.)

The last jar wasn't completely empty, but he decided it was good enough for whatever she wanted and he set it down and stood back as a bubble rose to the top and burst in a splatter of boiling oil.

Soon the bubbles were rising faster, growing more furious, churning and boiling until the ever building heat fumes distorted the view of the bricks behind the stove. The oil seemed to glow from its depths, growing more transparent, less viscous, illuminating the bubbles even as they burst into tiny, splattering droplets in a drumming, unceasing rhythm.

He took another step backwards. "Uh, Blondie, I don't know how hot you want it, but this looks good enough."

Pascal shifted away from the molten oil as well, pressing closer to her neck, almost hiding in her hair. She seemed to take the chameleon's opinion more seriously than Flynn's, and pulled her glasses down again with a determined set to her jaw.

"I think I did everything right," she said, kneeling to make adjustments to the pump, turning up the pressure to ten times what it was for the bath tub.

"Fantastic," Flynn said, leaning back against the wall to give up on her telling him what she was doing. He didn't really care how she entertained herself or how much of her hair got burnt off in a bizarre cooking accident. If she really hurt herself, she could just sing a little song and everything would be fantastic again.

She continued to murmur, mostly to herself. "I mean, I don't _think_ there's a leak, and even if there is, we _probably_ won't be scalded with oil."

"Awesome."

"And I think the pump is strong enough."

"Yeah. Super strong. That's a great pump you've got there."

"You really think so?" she asked, turning to him for the first time. Despite her overly magnified eyes and the dim, shaky light from the lantern and the scalding oil of death, her face somehow still looked hopeful – hopeful with a hint of pride and excitement at being praised.

It made him pause enough to second guess his sarcasm.

"How on earth would I ever know that?"

She shrugged, pushing herself to her feet. "Should we go ahead and try?"

"Yeah. Go for it. Whatever it is. Looks exciting. Like it'll do great things for your skin."

She reached up to the lever that controlled the flu, biting her lip before throwing her weight against it with a clang. For a moment there was silence except the fading ring of the opened flu and the popping boil of the oil. And then the sounds of tiny, metal feet clicked and scrambled down the pipes, the sounds layering on each other, building and echoing with every new click of every new chameleon that ran towards them.

Rapunzel grinned, skipping across the room even as it filled with the claustrophobic ticking of oncoming chameleons.

She threw a switch on the pump, which groaned and coughed and spluttered into a roar, the dials flickering, a series of chugging bangs beating against the freshly laid pipes. With one cough, the oil in the vat spluttered and splashed, causing both Flynn and Rapunzel to jump away, one of her hands gripping at his sleeve.

The sound of the chameleons faded, covered by the all-consuming roar and sharp bursts of steam from the pump. Or perhaps the chameleons sensed the danger and had stopped their forward movement. Either way, they could not be heard-

Until the pump found its rhythm, sucked the oil up through the pipes with a gurgle, and the chameleons began to scream.

It was an otherworldly sound, like the squeal of metal and the agonized cries of ghosts. It wrapped around the kitchen like steam, melting and slipping in pitch as the machines clawed against the pipes in a desperate attempt to escape, their efforts fading as their delicate clockwork melted from the inside.

Pascal bristled and ticked, pressing further into Rapunzel's hair, while Rapunzel hopped up and down beaming and chanting under the clamor, _It worked, it worked, it worked_.

Flynn stood and stared stupidly at the pipes as the boiling oil washed out the chameleon army, surged up to the roof to overflow the gutters and poured down the sides of the tower, cooling and congealing on its way down to cover the stones with a waxy residue, cementing the last of the chameleons where they stood, like confused gargoyles preserved in wax.


	12. Chapter 12

The sound of screaming faded to leave only the struggling whirr of the pump and a dry slurping noise as it tried to suck up every last drop of oil that remained in the vat. Rapunzel darted forward to shut the pump off, leaving Flynn's elbow alone and chilled despite the heat of the room. The pump wheezed to a halt, but Rapunzel was already yanking on the lever to re-close the flu, throwing her weight against it to force it shut despite the layer of oil congealing against the inside of the pipe.

Flynn could only stare dumbly. How had one little girl taken out an entire army of assassin robots _single_-_handedly_? It didn't make sense. Rapunzel was weird.

She launched herself at him again, causing him to stumble backwards. "We did it! See? I knew it'd work." She wrapped her arms around his neck and bounced up and down excitedly on the balls of her feet, squealing. The jumping made it difficult to embrace her. Not that he was really trying. More like he was just trying not to fall over.

"How..."

"I mean, I wasn't _positive_ it would work," she nattered, the speed of her rambling increasing until it became almost a ranting mutter. "But I was pretty sure. And it did! It worked! Can you believe it?"

"No, not really." His voice came out a bit too strained for his liking.

She pulled back from him and grinned, uncaring or oblivious to the disbelief that was forming a headache just behind his eyes.

"Come on! Let's go look."

And before he could protest, before her words could really sink in, she had grabbed his hand to drag him up the stairs.

She came to a halt at the very top of the spiraling staircase, so close to the dome of the roof that he had to duck or hit his head. She let go of his hand to jimmy another lever, this one smaller, more ornate, with several metal rods that moved and ticked in tandem as she worked to lever back and forth a few times, easing it into a gentle movement and working out any rusted kinks before she began to spin it and the closest panel of the dome began to ease outward.

"Whoa, whoa!" She stopped, but turned on him with a glare and a quiet order to "shhhh!"

He dropped his voice so she'd stop glaring at him. "What if there are more out there?"

She rolled her eyes. "There aren't any more."

"How do you know?"

She thought for a moment and clearly came up with nothing, but rather than admit her uncertainty, she set her face into a look of determination and glared at him some more. "Because there can't be," she said confidently, then turned back to the lever-turned-crank.

"Yeah right, Blondie." He made a grab to stop the lever from turning. And ended up in a scuffle with her.

He didn't really care if he were attacked by a swarm of pissed off chameleons. True, he could think of better ways to go, but he still didn't really care. But he'd be damned if he let Rapunzel throw away her life on a single act of stupidity.

She made an offended, exasperated noise, and struggled against him, gripping the lever and squirming in an attempt the throw him off. For a second they growled at each other as he tried to maneuver his body in front of her and she tried to push him away with her hip and her slim shoulder. With a well placed elbow to his stomach and a foot hooked behind his ankle, he tripped backwards with a gasp, landing on his ass on the floor.

"Don't," he warned, reaching out to her with one hand while the other grabbed at his side. She'd hit right where he'd injured himself in the crash and despite how well it had healed, pain still ripped through his spine, spots still danced in front of his eyes.

She made a face - a kind of fake surprise that didn't cover her smugness. He could almost hear her singsong as she adjusted her grip on the crank, _"Uh oh! I'm doing something awful and there's nothing you can do about it!"_

"Rapunzel-"

She turned the crank a quarter turn with an exaggerated gasp. _"Look at that! I'm being terrible and you can't possibly stop me in time, but you should totally try again so I can elbow you some more and gloat about it."_

"Seriously, that's not-"

With another half turn, the panel clicked open with a soft burst of cool, night air. Flynn bit down his protests, hoping that if there were more chameleons, his silence could keep Rapunzel unnoticed and safe.

She continued to crank, building up an easy cycle that spun faster and faster as the panel slid out and up, until the new window opened completely.

Then she stood straight and turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest, popping out a hip, and giving him a look that was too smug to be allowed.

Flynn narrowed his eyes at her and pushed himself to his feet with a groan. She only looked more pleased with herself as they stood chest to chest and he glared down at her.

"You think you're clever."

"I _am_ clever!"

There wasn't any arguing with that, so he just rolled his eyes and huffed as she poked him in the ribs and giggled slightly.

She ducked and crawled forward through the open panel, which now served as an awning over her head. Wriggling on her belly, she made her way onto a ledge that circled the tower. It was too narrow to stand, but she could lie there and view the valley bellow, her feet, and a long trail of hair still inside the tower.

"You coming?" She whispered, looking over her shoulder at him as if crawling into tight spaces was fun and something he should want to do all the time. She probably did it pretty often. She probably considered it an adventure, and maybe for her it was. Sitting on the roof was as close to going outside as she would dare.

He squeezed in next to her, finding it too difficult to move on hands and knees and switching to crawling with his forearms and hips. Into how many small, dark places was she going to lead him? She was lucky he wasn't claustrophobic or he would have lost it by now.

Luckily the space opened out once he got outside. The ledge stretched out to either side, and the awning didn't reach to obscure the stars overhead. The black of night felt open and vast in the fresh air as opposed to the constricting dark inside the tower. He brushed against Rapunzel, against her arm, against her skirt puffed out with petticoats. But just barely, her skin like the warmth from a candle you could only feel when your hand was too close, when you were actively looking for it.

The valley dropped out below them at a sudden, sickening angle. Suddenly he was glad for the confined space as it was the only thing holding off vertigo.

And spread before them was the army, filling the valley nearly to bursting, a hundred fires between five hundred tents, the soldiers scurrying in a way that spoke of both chaos and order. A hasty road had been constructed, trampling down the grass and a steady stream of carts and horses and automobiles rolled in and out of the camp. They could make out the larger tents, those of high ranking officers. They could spot the weapon stores that were being stockpiled, a team of workers unloading a new shipment even as they watched. They could see the beginnings of siege towers on the far side of the valley, and he could imagine he heard the sounds of hammering as they grew taller.

"Wow," Rapunzel breathed. "Look at it all. Have you ever seen so many people in one place?"

Of course he had, so he didn't answer. And honestly, it would be better for them if there were fewer people for her gawking enjoyment.

Pascal popped up on her shoulder, surveyed the area, then clicked at her, offering up a lens from her goggles. Hesitantly, she took it, frowning at how it was no longer attached to her head, then holding it up to one eye to get a closer look at the goings on, her other eye squeezing shut, causing her nose to wrinkle.

The chameleon didn't seem to notice her sadness, and looked especially pleased with itself for being helpful before it turned the the valley below and started filming everything.

"Oh look. They brought explosives," Flynn mused.

"Really?" Her gaze swerved to the right, then followed his finger as he pointed out the barrels stacked in the back of a truck just coming into the valley. "Wow! Like with fire, right? I've never seen a big one before. Just little sparks or puffs of steam. How big an explosion could those make? What kind of explosives are they? How far away will people see the smoke?"

He hissed at her to bring her enthusiasm back to a level where they wouldn't get noticed and then shot, and she ducked her head with a soft apology. Now that he was thinking about it, it was probably best that they stayed pressed to the ledge. Hidden as they were, they might go unnoticed if she started squealing again or if Pascal decided to take pictures.

"I don't know what kind they are," he whispered. "But if I were in charge of ordering powder kegs, I'd get enough to level your tower."

"Really? That much?" She sounded more awed and excited than terrified.

"Yeah, Blondie. That much."

"Wow."

He stared at her as she watched for a moment more then moved on to something else a little to the left and deeper into the valley.

"Having the tower blow to bits around us is a bad thing, you know."

She hummed, still focused on whatever novelty she had found.

"We're probably going to die in – about – oh – twelve hours. Pascal will get squished by a brick and the rubble will never come out of your hair. Assuming the siege towers don't get us killed first, of course."

"What's a siege tower?"

"Those things." He pointed and again she followed. "They're like big stairs that they build tall enough to reach one of your windows, then they use a battering ram or light them on fire to get in."

"Oh! That's inventive." She lowered her magnifying lens for a moment to consult with Pascal. "Why didn't we think of that? Like a folding staircase. Maybe on extending hinges where the steps could fold out like an accordion? It could raise up the side of the tower so no one can get in and then we can lower it for mother. That would be _much_ easier."

"You're not taking this very seriously."

"Hmm. You're right. That would be too heavy. We should make the stairs steam powered, Pascal."

"Gah! Rapunzel!"

She laughed again. "Okay. Okay. So the siege towers are bad. And the explosives are bad after that."

"Right."

"Anything else?"

"Blondie, it's all bad."

"I know! They're messing up the valley. Mother won't like that at all. Look! They're even leaving trash in the grass!"

"Shhhh."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

Flynn narrowed his eyes, watching the patrols, noting how the exposed sides of the tower were lit up with flood lights and how there was a ten yard gap of bare ground surrounding the tower's base where they would be sitting ducks if they managed by some miracle to reach the ground unseen. But at the moment, it looked like escape was their only option.

Rapunzel's face set in determination, and she handed her magnifying lens back to Pascal before scooting backwards back into the tower.

"Where are you going?"

"I've got an idea."

"What, another one?"

She grinned.

"You gonna tell me what it is?"

She thought for a second. "Hmm. Nope."

"Do you need help?"

She gave him a pitying look. "How about you stay here and keep Pascal company."

His eyebrows furrowed. He wasn't _that_ useless.

His face made her grin again, then she disappeared into the dark.


	13. Chapter 13

Flynn decided not to move. Why bother? Even with the view of the giant army come to kill him, it was much nicer out on the ledge than stuck in the tower. He realized with a pang to his gut how much he missed the sky over his head and the breeze against his face. Funny, he'd never though he'd miss being exposed and basically homeless. But then maybe it was more about the freedom than about the risk of hypothermia.

Rapunzel made several trips into the tower, coming back each time with her arms loaded with stuff. Feigning disinterest, he watched her blankly over his shoulder every time she popped up to add to her ever growing pile of raw materials. Copper tubing. A marmalade jar full of corks, soaking in some sort of liquid. A gigantic rubber band. Who knew what she was up to.

She'd shoot him a smile and push her hair back out of her eyes and dart off into the dark once more.

He shook his head and turned back to the chameleon. He didn't care if she told him her latest weird plot. She clearly wasn't going to let him in on it, so why bother getting irritated? He had several other things to brood on already.

Pascal recorded him for a moment, then rewound the tape to play back the sound of a sigh. Oh God. Had that noise really come out of his mouth? Flynn stared at it, aghast.

The chameleon played the sound twice more, each time grating against Flynn's frazzled nerves with greater and greater precision.

Then Pascal took Flynn's picture, blinding him momentarily and causing him to duck his head instinctively to hide from the troops below. After a moment in which he was not murdered, he turned to glare to the chameleon, who sighed at him again.

Ugg. He was probably making a horribly unattractive face in that picture too.

"Okay!" Rapunzel whispered behind him, surveying her collection of weird stuff with her hands clasped against her chest. "I think this is everything." Then she flopped to the floor in a flourish of puffy skirt and went after the copper tubing with a tape measure.

He watched her, still not understanding what she was doing, but entranced none the less by the practiced movements of her hands and the look of concentration that settled about her lips, about her eyes. She brushed her hair from her face again, missing a few damp strands that had stuck to her forehead. She blinked a few times as if fighting off dizziness, then returned to her work with renewed determination.

She sealed the end of one tube, then slipped in inside a second, wider tube, checking for an airtight seal and for how well they could move against one another. She added big globs of grease that of course got in her hair and on her dress, but seemed to improve whatever she was doing. That's what he gathered from he expression, anyway.

She pulled out a screw driver from one of her pockets, holding a set of screws in her mouth as she attached the ends of the elastic band to the tower wall so it spanned the window. For a second Flynn thought she was roping him off, but then she started checking the elasticity, pulling it back and making marks on the floor, adjusting the screws and checking their strength.

"You need me to move?" he asked, not really wanted to get slapped with a giant rubber band.

"What? Oh! Yes! Come hold this."

The chameleon placed itself on his shoulder as he wriggled his way back into the tower. He knelt down next to Rapunzel as she narrowed her eyes, brought her face close to the screws, leaned back, then bent forward again at a different angle. She repeated this over and over – an adjustment here, a hum in thought there.

Pascal sighed from his shoulder, and Rapunzel reached up to stroke its head absently before Flynn could shove it off or groan too loudly. Her fingers brushed against his neck, the tingling effect of which was neutralized as the chameleon began to tick rapidly in a kind of purr that shook Flynn's whole shoulder.

"Okay," she said at last, handing him the slack elastic band. "Hold this and stretch it out as far as you can."

He raised an eyebrow at it, then at her. "Is this from your skirt?"

She laughed. "Not _this _ skirt."

"Ah. Right. How could I be so stupid?"

She shrugged with a happy, little smile, her thin shoulders raising to her ears then collapsing back into place with a deep exhale and an eyelash bat.

He decided to ignore her crazy attitude and focus more on her nutty science experiment. He stood and after testing the elastic a moment, pulled it back and tight, like a slingshot aimed out the window. He held it still as she inspected it, checking the screws to make sure they wouldn't snap back and kill him or catapult him down the stairs, then twanging one side of the band.

"Can you pull it more?"

"Yep." He strained against the band, pulling as hard as he could to show off the strength in his arms that amazingly (but unexpectedly) failed to impress her. She was too busy fussing with her tape measure again, making marks on the floor.

"Lower it just a bit... More... There!"

She made several more marks, reaching up to pluck at the band again, blinking several times in a daze before adjusting her tape measure and making even more marks. His arms started to get tired.

"Hmm." She sunk back onto her heels. "Okay. You can let go now."

He did gratefully, trying to release it gently so it wouldn't snap, trying not to let the effort show. Pascal sighed again as he plopped onto the floor next to Rapunzel.

She stared at the marks she'd made, rubbing her temple with her fingers and frowning. Her eyes looked glazed, but it could have been the dull light of the lantern and the fatigue of the day.

"Hey, are you alright?"

"What? Yeah. I'm just..." She shook her head and trailed off, then she seemed to forget he was there again as she reached for a weird brass fitting and a bunch of heavy duty nails.

She grabbed a heavy duty hammer and secured the fitting to the windowsill with a great deal of loud, echoing pounding. Flynn flinched at every hit and Pascal grew more and more agitated, spinning in a little circle and emitting random bursts of steam from his sides. With the noise she was making, the army outside would surely know they were up to something. Or maybe they'd be just as confused and concerned as Flynn. That would be nice.

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall in as much an effort to show how little he cared as it was an attempt to not be hit with all the tiny, flying bits of mortar.

After way longer than it should have taken to nail something to something else and several grumpy mutterings about how she missed her goggles, Rapunzel put down her hammer and inspected the strength of the fastening, wiping sweat from her forehead. She looked ill.

"You want to take a break, Blondie? Catch a nap?"

"No," she chirped, but it sounded wistful almost, like a sigh. She grabbed her pipe within a pipe, which was long enough to be awkward for her to handle, and started connecting one end to the fastening on the window sill. Flynn stepped forward to hold the other end of the pipe up off the floor, freeing up both her hands for her to bolt down some things and bust out a soldering iron.

Because nothing said sanity and safety like a soldering iron.

She let it set for a moment before testing it, turning it left and right like a rudder, up and down like a water pump, then around in easy circles. Without a word, she moved into Flynn's personal space to attach the other end of the pipe to the middle of the elastic band with what looked like fast acting glue. Her construction project began to take on the form of a crossbow made out of random household scrap and nails.

Rapunzel disappeared down the stairs again, leaving Flynn to hold her project. He started having trouble holding it up, not because it was growing steadily heavier the later it got (which it kind of was), but just because of its general unwieldiness. He shifted and considered just setting his end on the ground, but that might mess up her soldering or glue or something.

Pascal sighed.

He heard her return before he saw her through the dark as she dragged one of the heavy wooden dining chairs up the stairs. He moved to help her, but he was stuck holding her crossbow, so he just stood there a moment looking useless and waiting for her.

She slumped into the chair when she reached the landing, and while she was still sitting in it, Flynn maneuvered it around with a groan of wood scraping on wood. Then he rested her contraption against one of the horizontal slats in the chair back and slumped to onto the chair himself, nudging her to one side.

For a moment they sat there as he rolled his tired neck from side to side and she rubbed her temple again, looking as though she might doze off at any moment.

"Okaaaay," he said. "So, I know it's pointless to ask about – well - _this_." He gestured to the mess she'd made and half attached to the wall. "But... what are you doing?"

"I thought I'd make a gun," she said, leaning to the side to use his shoulder as a pillow.

"... What?"

She nuzzled into his neck and pulled his arm into a weak hug. "We can shoot at them and they won't send the siege towers after us."

He stared down at her. She didn't look like she was up for answering questions, but now he was painfully curious. "What were you planning on shooting at them? Is there a stock pile of bullets in here that I don't know about?"

She laughed a little, but it sounded a bit like Pascal's obnoxious sighing noise. "I'll use these," she said, nudging the jar full of corks with her foot.

"Corks?"

She nodded.

"Oh yeah," he drawled, rolling his eyes. "They'll piss themselves in fear and surrender immediately."

"You don't like it?"

"They're _corks_. Chucking them at the Corona army will just mildly irritate them."

"They'll be moving very fast. That can be dangerous."

"And this thing has _great_ aim, am I right? You can hit every single soldier right in the eye until they're all blind and have to stumble home."

She considered that a moment, staring at her cork jar. "I don't think I have enough corks to hit all of them."

"Well, if you run out of corks, you can throw pillows at them."

"I don't want to light my pillow on fire. I like my pillow."

"You- Wait. Light on fire?"

She nodded against his shoulder. "To burn down the siege towers."

Flynn paused. That was... that was actually a good idea. And knowing Rapunzel it might actually work.

He hopped up to look at her crossbow more closely, and she groaned when the shoulder she had been leaning against disappeared.

"What's the range on this?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I just made it."

He grinned down at her. "You want to try now?"

She beaming back, glad that he was eager to try one of her ideas and that he didn't seem as mad or distant anymore. She reached out for his hand and he helped pull her to her feet.

Grabbing the cork jar off the floor, she pushed a pair of tongs into Flynn's hands. Then, gripping the jar with both hands and making a strained face, she unscrewed the top before Flynn could offer to help her. She took the tongs from him and used them to fish out one of the corks. The smell of alcohol as soon as she opened the jar made his eyes water.

"I use them as fire starters," she said. "They light really easily."

In the dim light from the lantern, the jar looked as though it were filled with some kind of preserved animal specimen – newt eyeballs or squid tentacles. She made a movement as though reaching for her goggles, then stopped herself and carried on. With deep concentration, she shook the cork so it wasn't dripping and instructed him to pull back the tubes.

He hurriedly kicked the chair out of the way like a bit of a spaz, and pulled the thinner tube back, causing them to telescope outward, causing the rubber band to stretch brutally. He braced his feet and clenched his jaw, fighting against the elastic.

"You good?" she asked.

"Yeah. Just make it fast."

She took the cork gingerly between her slender fingers, then crammed it in the front end of the piping with a hollow, metal plunk. Then she grabbed a candle lighter, quickly set it aflame in the lantern and reached out for the cork, which lit with a WOOSH that had her jumping backward and nearly caused him to lose his grip

"Alright, let go!" she shouted over the roar of the fire.

"Shouldn't we aim or something?"

"What? Oh!" She tried to look out the window, but couldn't see anything over the flames and the rising cloud of smoke. "Aim for the explosives."

Flynn couldn't see much either, but he swiveled around to aim a bit to the right and then, unable to hold it longer, let go with a twang. The pipes snapped together, the pressure expelling the cork like a bullet from a gun, sending it rocketing out of the tower and towards the camp below.

They coughed and fanned away the smoke trail, as they leaned out over the cork gun to watch their projectile's progress. It flew away, growing smaller and dimmer, then for a moment it disappeared completely.

Then a tent caught fire.

"Yay!" Rapunzel sighed.

It had traveled far enough, but it had landed a bit to the left of the munitions tent. Shouts rose up from below, and Flynn pulled her back inside and set to aiming the gun again.

"We have to hit it before they move everything out of range. Load her up again."

Rapunzel was already on it, grabbing another cork. He waited until she had it ready in her hand before pulling the elastic back and letting her light it.

"Fire!"

Another twang and the cork was loose, soaring over the camp to land in the dark. The shouting when it hit its mark was instantaneous.

The explosion took a moment.

A deafening boom echoed through the valley, causing Rapunzel to shrink back, her eyes wide in fear and awe and excitement. And a great dome of an explosion burst from the tent, sending flaming bits of crates and tent poles, of ripped fabric and dynamite casing flying through the air, setting light to other tents.

Most of the north side of the camp was on fire, the men scrambling and shouting and running to the stream for water.

Flynn and Rapunzel pulled back, taking their places for another shot.

"Try for the siege towers this time," she instructed.

He nodded, hauled the pipes back, held them just long enough for her to set it alight, then let it fly.

This one didn't make it far enough, but it did sent another tent on fire.

Flynn frowned.

"Here. Tilt it up," she said, slipping to the floor and pulling the back end down towards her. She craned her neck to look out the window and try to judge the distance. "It might go farther."

The angle was hard to maintain, and he ended up on the floor with his foot braced against the dinning room chair, but it did make the cork go farther.

One of the siege towers began to burn.

They decided to shoot another cork into the general area, just to make sure they destroyed them all.

"What now?" she asked, watching the flames spread across the valley. With a creaking groan, one of the siege towers collapsed as tents folded in on themselves, their fabric lit from within and billowing like ghosts.

"Want to hit the officer's tents?" he asked with a smirk.

She nodded, pulling another cork out of the bottle and wiping her sweaty forehead on her sleeve. Her eyes were glassy again, her face more tired than chipper despite their obvious victory.

"You sure you're alright?"

"Yeah," she said, but her voice was small and not at all convincing.

He couldn't tell if he should call her on it or not, and pulled the gun into position for their last shot, which she loaded more slowly than she had before, her fingers slipping as she stuffed in the cork.

Silently, she watched it fly away, a slight frown across her lips. She made another movement for the goggles that weren't there, shivered, and hugged herself.

Without thinking, overcome with their latest, ridiculous success, he reached to rub her back, and she leaned into him instinctively, her forehead feverish against his cheek, her breath a struggling wheeze.

He frowned, the concern evident in his face and his actions as he wrapped his arm more securely about her shoulders. "You're not alright," he said.

She made a weak noise, trembled another moment, then slumped completely as another siege tower collapsed and Pascal took several flashing pictures in quick succession.

"Rapunzel? _Rapunzel_?" She didn't move, even when he shook her, and in a moment she was in his arms and he was rushing her downstairs and the valley was blazing below them.


	14. Chapter 14

There comes a point in waiting when it's useless to wait any longer. The Stabbington brothers watched this time come and then pass with a dull sense of finality.

Flynn Rider was not going to show up, and their job shifted from retrieval and delivery to search and destroy. They didn't mind this. They were expecting it. They excelled at it.

The only issue now was finding Rider. Their job would be easiest if he made it to the airships, then died there. Such an uproar would surely draw attention, and it wouldn't be hard to find someone to tell the story. It'd be easier, but then again, they wouldn't get the satisfaction of killing the little snot themselves.

If he was smart, he would have fled the country as soon as they let him loose. Sort of smart. No, not really that smart. Rider was incapable of making intelligent decisions, and they'd track him down no matter where he went. He could run to the ends of the earth, they'd find him. And the longer they chased him, the more violent and satisfying his end would be.

It didn't take the brothers long to find a troop of royal guards, looking frazzled and pained, and rushing so much that they ended up standing still.

The younger brother prepared his pistol, ready to take them all on and then beat the information from them. But the older brother rolled his eyes and shoved the pistol away. Killing a whole troop of guards would draw attention, which would go against one of the few stipulations imposed on this job by their employer.

Stealth. Always stealth.

Rider, coward that he was, might have not even made it to the battery, and an attack on the guards would give away that something was up, be a complete waste of effort, and they'd have to stop later and buy more bullets.

The younger brother growled, putting his pistol aside, but not away.

They waited. They watched. And it took all of five minutes to learn that, against all odds, Rider had been successful. He had stolen the battery straight from the queen's hands and thrown all of Corona into chaos.

The older brother raised an eyebrow. Despite being a piss ant, and despite taking the battery for himself (and in so doing making himself the enemy of every country on the continent) he'd still done half his job and brought the empire down a peg or two.

Admirable. But not enough.

It took a day of traveling in the general direction that the airship Rider stole was reportedly headed before it became clear that the entirety of the Corona army was heading in the same direction, converging on a single point. En masse they were easy to follow. The difficult part was doing so without arousing suspicions. At that point the younger brother got the joyful excuse to take out two of the soldiers, taking their poorly fitting uniforms and rolling their bodies into the river.

Thus disguised, the Stabbingtons traveled, hiding in plain sight within the chaotic army, and the next day, just before sunset, they came upon the camp surrounding the tower. It loomed over them, quiet despite the bustle at its base and the dried and hardened oil coating the sides, evidence of the last sudden and violent outburst. It seemed impenetrable, and the force the army had gathered just emphasized this point further.

They glanced at one another, then back up at the tower, silently agreeing that somehow, against all odds, they would need to get inside.

* * *

><p>The constant march of guards in the direction of the tower caught the attention of others as well. Businessmen with entrepreneurial spirits, bakers and brewers, smithies and iron workers set up stands and tents near the camp and along the supply trails that began to form. A small performance troop even set up a makeshift stage. None had quite grasped the direness of the situation. None really noticed or believed that the empire teetered on the brink of destruction.<p>

The sudden foot traffic and general disruption caught Gothel's attention as well.

She didn't like seeing guards at all, much less in such numbers. She couldn't risk them finding the tower, finding Rapunzel, and with her heart pounding faster and stronger with every mile and the ever thickening patrols of the guards, she ran home as if the wind itself was chasing her.

And her heart nearly stopped when she reached the valley, surrounded by men trying to breach the stones that held it upright, men come to take her daughter and her livelihood, come to drag her to a cold cell in the castle dungeons or worse.

She would never allow that to happen. Never. Ducking into the shadows and narrowing her eyes she swore as she forced her breath to calm that she would fight till her dying breath to keep what was hers.

Somehow, against unbelievable odds, she had to get Rapunzel out of there.

* * *

><p>Flynn closed his eyes and took a deep breath, crossing his arms over his chest to have some place to put his hands before frowning down at Rapunzel's still form once more.<p>

"It's poison. Isn't it?"

Pascal didn't have an answer. He just dashed worriedly back and forth across her chest and shoulders. He ticked and squeaked and let loose bursts of steam, his eyes rolling and head jerking back and forth. His tail rolled in on itself so tightly that it scraped metal on metal.

Flynn wished it would calm down. Its panic on top of his own fears was making him edgy and snappish.

Her breathing was still ragged. Her eyebrows furrowed and twitched in pain over eyes that refused to open. He'd placed a damp cloth over her forehead to try to bring down the fever, but of course it wasn't helping.

There really wasn't much that could help.

He wracked his brain for any slight scrap of advice he'd heard about poison, but it was all just warnings and horror stories. The dominating, circulating rumor was that if you were attacked by an assassin chameleon you simply wouldn't survive. The only thing to do was avoid them at all costs.

He tore through her room to finally find her medical book under a pile of papers and origami flowers, them flipped through it frantically to find anything that would help. He was met only with grim illustrations of certain doom and brief instructions for how to induce vomiting if the poison was ingested. If poisoned by an animal that injected the venom into the blood stream, he was supposed to suck it out – which sounded horrible and was coupled with an equally horrific picture. But Rapunzel had healed her wound, so there was no longer a place from which to remove the poison. And it had been in her system so long now.

He swallowed and quietly admitted the awful truth.

"She needs a doctor."

The chameleon thoroughly agreed with this idea, but that didn't make it any easier.

Only when she shifted slightly in discomfort, her breath catching for a heart-stopping moment before resuming its unsteady rhythm did he push himself into action.

He grabbed her handkerchief, which she'd been using to hold tiny watch parts and dumped the itty bits carelessly onto her workbench, then used the cloth to grab the battery. Snatching up a crowbar, he marched into the main room.

Pascal made a string of terrible noises and chased after him, grabbing at his pants leg with the barbs in his tail.

"Damn it! What? What do you want?"

Pascal growled, one eye glaring at him, the other swiveled backwards and locked onto Rapunzel in the other room.

"You think I'm leaving? Well, I'm not. Not right this second anyway. I got her into this and now I'm getting her out, even if she is a bratty, crazy, obnoxious..." He trailed off as his heart sank to his stomach.

He glared at Pascal, then scooped down to grab him, dumping him unceremoniously on his shoulder. "Let go of my pants and shut up if you're not helping."

The spiral stairs were covered in thick slabs of stone that were not at all easy to pry off so the battery could be shoved underneath, and not at all easy to put back in place so they looked as though they hadn't been moved.

"You see where I put that?" Flynn asked.

Pascal gave him a blank stare.

"No. You _need_ to remember where – oh never mind. You useless piece of-"

The chameleon hissed at him, a warning as his tail shifted and clanked, curling and uncurling and curling again, but Flynn was beyond caring.

He raided her closet next. That's where she said she'd put the rest of his clothes. Keeping the shirt she'd made him, he shrugged on his vest and stolen uniform jacket, noting that she'd patched them as best she could. His fingers traced over the careful stitching.

Next he went after the drapes over the windows, which came down easily when he pulled on them. The chameleon filmed him as he tied them all together, making a rope long enough to reach the ground. He wasn't sure he wanted his final acts documented like this. If Rapunzel survived, would she watch this film later? What would she think?

He shook it off to give Pascal instructions. The chameleon needed them to be clear and crisp and direct, or his memory would get hazy and he would forget. He didn't really trust the machine to carry out any part of his plan, but it wasn't as though they had a choice in the matter.

"When I'm done climbing down, you pull this rope back up. That's important. Pull the rope up. Take care of Rapunzel while I'm gone. And then don't lower the rope or let anyone back in until the doctor comes. I might not be with them, but if the doctor's there, you let them in. Got it?"

Pascal looked confused and tilted his head, probably recording the film at an awkward angle.

Flynn groaned. "This is going to be a disaster."

He grabbed the chameleon again and headed for Rapunzel's room to say his goodbyes. The idea of goodbyes made him downright ill.

He sat on the edge of her bed and checked the cloth on her forehead, realizing belatedly that he had only done so to postpone the moment. The cloth was warm to the touch, just like her skin, but he didn't know what to do about that except toss it away.

Shit. He didn't know what to do about anything.

She looked so pale, so lifeless when he was used to seeing her run, seeing her smile.

He spoke to Pascal without looking at him, his fingers busy stroking the hair back from Rapunzel's face. "Can you record me?"

A moment later there was the familiar click of a tape recorder and Flynn considered it a small blessing. His voice came out softer than he was expecting when he began to speak. It was almost gentle and that was strange because he was still so angry at her. He was more angry at her now that she was so sick, that she was threatening to leave him to continue their idiotic adventure alone.

He tucked the brown stands of hair behind her ear.

"Hey Blondie. I-" He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I got you into this. Really. That just sucks. But I'm going to make it up to you. I'm getting you a doctor to make you better. So don't think I'm running away or anything. As soon as they get you fixed up, you give them the battery. Alright? It's hidden under the third step from the bottom on your staircase. Tell them I took you hostage. They only want me and the battery, so you'll be safe."

He threaded his fingers through hers where they lay limp and folded across her stomach.

"Rapunzel, I want you to live. And not just up in this tower. I want you to really live. Go see the world. Do everything you've dreamed of doing."

The truth was that all the times he'd set himself up to die, he'd never had a real reason. He'd never had something worth dying for. Not the battery or downfall of the empire. Nothing.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, his life had purpose. Her life and safety, her happiness, those were worth protecting. And that realization gave him an invigorating clarity, that washed over him in waves, cleansing him. It was wonderful and terrible and left him more alive than he'd ever felt even as he was walking to his death.

He pressed his lips to her forehead, smoothing her furrowed brow with his thumb as he pulled back.

He sighed and started talking again, even though he hadn't planned to say anything more. He hadn't really planned on any of this.

"My real name is Eugene. Eugene Fitzherbert. Pretty bad, right? But – oh shit, I don't... I - I just thought you might like to know."


	15. Chapter 15

The fire had taken down a few of the flood lights, throwing the northern and western sides of the tower into darkness. With the camp still in chaos as they scrambled to dampen the fires and evacuate most of their force out of the valley, no one noticed Flynn repel down the side of the tower, covered by darkness and a hazy cloud of smoke.

He dropped to a crouch on the ground, scanning for any sign of life, any sign he'd been spotted. But the area was deserted, the shouts and running footsteps muffled by distance and blocked by crowded rows of tents and makeshift structures.

Behind him the rope twitched, then began to rise inch by inch as Pascal pulled it back into the tower. Flynn took a moment to thank his lucky stars that the chameleon had listened to him and remembered, and to hope that it didn't get distracted half way through.

Doubled over and low to the ground, he pushed himself forward to cross the short stretch of barren ground between the tower and the camp.

The thick canvas from the tents - once bright purples and pale yellows, cheerful blues and reds – hung in tatters, burnt and crumbling, now in the night the dark colors of war. A wind passed that he could not feel, but he could see the smoke billow past, blotting out shapes not ten feet away. Charred flakes stood out as specks of solid matter in the haze, but these sizzled and disappeared, as ethereal as everything else. And the canvas billowed like a sinking standard as the structures themselves threatened to fold in on themselves in surrender.

One of the lights had fallen onto its side, and with the smoke heavy in the air, the bright, white beam blazed through the camp, forming a tunnel of intense illumination setting off deep black shadows. Flynn squinted from the light, and gave it a wide berth. The next floodlight had exploded, littering the ground with shards of glass that crunched under his boots and dug into the grass.

An orange rolling glow rose up from the valley just ahead lighting the sky and casting the scene into silhouettes. It felt as if the very ground was heating in ominous waves that rose from what was once marshy greenery. He started to sweat in his jacket, the heat irritating his eyes and throat, the smoke groping its way into his lungs to slump into his chest, making him heavy and dizzy. It felt as though people were watching him, blended in with the shadows, watching but unable to touch him as soft, ghostlike fingers brushed the back of his neck.

His instinct was to sneak, to duck into the shadows and move like a phantom so no one would even suspect his presence. But then again, he wanted to be found. He needed to be taken to some higher authority so he could make his bargain and turn himself in.

That's when he realized he had no idea what he was doing.

Okay. Turn himself in. That meant he needed to find some people, and that meant heading towards the shouting.

He threw back his shoulders to make himself look taller, more self assured, more easily noticed and recognized. A smirk he didn't feel slipped onto his face to complete the illusion, and he felt a bit sick at how easily it appeared.

His face had never made him feel sick before.

Maybe it was the smoke and the stench. Choking down a cough, he set out through the camp with determination. He slipped through the narrow spaces between structures, avoiding toppled carts that rose suddenly out of the gloom, running into dead ends and blocked alleys, following voices that rose and fell in volume, that swung from fear to pain to panic, coming first from one way, then from another, turning him about as the space crowded in on him with another roll of smoke, another blast of heat, another surge of dizziness.

The edge of the clearing now devoted to the burning siege towers appeared, seeming far, far away one moment, only to open out before him the next, as if the darkness had broken open to spill a pink sky and roaring flames. Soldiers scrambled, forming lines to pass buckets of water, running with long hoses held by four men, beating at the flames with blankets and long coats and torn swaths of tent canvas.

In the dancing, orange light they could see him more clearly than they would be able to anywhere else in the flaming valley, and he struck a pose, folding his arms across his chest and looking enormously pleased with himself while he waited for someone to spot him.

"Hey! You!"

Flynn grinned, bracing himself to be dragged off and thrown in front of a general.

Someone hit him in the chest with a bucket, knocking the wind from him, sloshing water onto his chest as they thrust the bucket into his arms. "Don't just stand there, man!"

Flynn gaped, and looked up into the man's face, but he had already turned and shot off back to the fire.

And now Flynn had a bucket.

Clearly he didn't stand out as much as he thought he did. He was not an illuminated beacon and with the dark and the smoke and everyone's panic he would have to be more assertive.

He set the bucket down and strode towards the nearest group of men. Before he could reach them, they swerved like a flock of startled geese and disappeared into the night. Someone ran past him, swooping to pick up the bucket before they continued on towards the fire.

Flynn turned to the next closest group, men hauling a limp hose and shouting over their shoulders for someone to turn on the water.

Before he could make it to them, someone grabbed his arm and his heart leapt, only to fall again when he realized they weren't taking him prisoner. They were a dark shadow without features, and they grabbed two more people from the gloom and dragged them all across the clearing, running and stumbling and gasping through the thin air.

"Hey!" He grabbed at the hand fisted in the sleeve of his jacket. "Let go. What are you doing?" But it seemed that the form dragging him didn't even realize he was doing so. He was too focused on his goal and too frazzled to notice Flynn's words over the shouting, to notice the grip on his wrist over the heat and crackle of the flames.

Flynn was deposited next to a dark siege tower whose fire had been extinguished. In the flutter of light from the other flaming towers, he could barely see how it lay charred and heavy, fallen on its side onto a crate of cannonballs that has escaped to roll and scatter across the ground, to hide dangerously in the dark and send men tumbling as they stepped on them. "I need you to take me to-" A rope was shoved into his hands and whoever had handed it to him disappeared before he could finish speaking.

"Now, men!" came a shout. "Heave!"

The group that had formed around him – a group he hadn't really seen until that moment, and still couldn't really make out now - suddenly strained against the ropes in their hands, tugging the fallen siege tower to haul it back upright. He could only see them in glimpses now, figures with silhouettes blurred from the smoke that rolled across the ground in a new wave and filled his lungs with ash. He could only see them as shapes more solid that the darkness around them. He could only see them because they moved together, and because they made noise as they pulled, groaning and straining and cursing.

Flynn tossed his rope aside with disgust and slipped away.

He made it barely ten paces before someone ran up to him and shoved something heavy into his arms. "Take him to the infirmary!" The weight in his arms groaned, and Flynn balked as he realized it was a man, smelling of blood and ash and barely recognizable.

"Wait. I don't know where-" But the man who had dropped the injured soldier into his arms had disappeared.

Flynn swore, and shifted the body against him, slipping under one of its arms. It moaned again, and Flynn started walking in a random direction, his heart beating far too fast. This man was going to die in his arms and there was nothing he could do. Disgust and irritation warred in his stomach, only just holding back the renewed panic and guilt and helplessness. This man was going to die just like Rapunzel, and both would be entirely his fault.

Oh, God, Rapunzel.

Every moment might be her last and he did not have time for this. His chest grew tight, his pulse speeding faster and faster, and he clenched his jaw into a snarl as the man he carried slowed his pace with his limp, heavy shuffle. Flynn wanted to dump him on the ground and charge off, grab someone and tear the camp apart until someone helped her, until someone fixed her and made her laugh again. He wanted to shout and swear and punch someone, but instead he shifted the soldier's weight, and clenched his fingers tighter around his shoulder.

His free hand darted into the night and he grabbed the next shadow he saw by the back of its collar, causing it to yelp and stumble and nearly drop the bucket of water it carried. "Take this man to the infirmary!" he ordered, his voice ragged from the smoke and commanding from his irritation. He shoved the injured man into the other man's arms, grabbing the bucket and pulling it away.

He caught a glimpse of the man's face as he gaped at the form pressed upon him. Flynn caught a glimpse of the injured man's face too and purposefully looked away.

"Where's the general?" Flynn shouted.

"Where's the infirmary?" the man asked, looking distinctly pale in the orange light.

Neither had any idea. They quickly turned to go their separate ways.

Flynn tossed the bucket aside and grabbed the next figure he saw, growing more desperate and more angry with each second he spent in this hellish chaos. "Who's in charge here?" The figure shook his head, unable to speak from fear of Flynn shouting, and fear of the fire, and a great coughing fit that overcame him.

He slipped away and Flynn spun again, grabbing someone else by the arm. "I need to turn myself-" Again he was brushed off.

He stood there, rage filled and helpless as the smoke billowed past, stinging his eyes and plastering against his skin, growing thicker and thicker and weighing down whatever hope he'd had of saving Rapunzel.

He had to save Rapunzel. It was the only thing he wanted, the only thing he had left, the only thing that would give his life worth.

His muscles wound tight and burning beneath his skin, his fear so strong and sickly he threatened to explode, and he shouted at the sky and the fire and the smoke. "_Damn it_! Don't any of you know who I am?!"

A thick hand clapped onto his shoulder, sending up a cloud of black ash.

"Rider," a voice growled, and he was spun around before elation could light in his chest.

Above him loomed the Stabbingtons.

And all hope was lost.


	16. Chapter 16

Flynn stumbled as he was tossed against a storage shed, back in the darkness of the camp and out of sight. Not that anyone would notice anyway, apparently. He caught himself and straightened, tugging his jacket back into place with every ounce of dignity at his disposal, before turning to the Stabbingtons.

They were far closer than he'd expected, looming over him and looking even more murderous than usual.

"Where is it?"

"Where's what?" Flynn asked.

The nearest Stabbington punched him, a rock hard fist embedding in the flesh of his gut. His stomach recoiled and he could feel his last meal surging to escape. Gasping, he tried to double over, but a solid hand on his shoulder kept him upright, pinned against the storage shed.

He closed his eyes and with a grimace fought down being sick. His anxiety tasted so bitter that it was making things difficult.

One of the Stabbingtons bent forward to leer right into Flynn's face. "Where is it?"

"Your eye? How should I know? You should really keep better track of-"

Another punch, this one landing slightly to the left of the last so even more of him would be bruised, so he could feel that same first bite of pain all over again. This one landed close enough to the gash in his side that he felt the blood drain from his face. He felt his knees give out and he would have fallen to the ground if he wasn't held tight against the shed.

"The battery, Rider." He could feel the Stabbington's breath on his face, and he cringed and pulled back, but there was nowhere to go. His discomfort seemed to please the Stabbingtons. A smirk rolled through every word they spoke. Their excitement hung in the air like a second layer of smoke.

They'd been waiting to pummel him for days.

"All we care about is the battery and if you knew what was good for you, it'd be all you cared about too."

"You have no idea how true that is. I should really listen to you guys more."

The Stabbington frowned at him. "Where is it?"

"I hid it."

The Stabbingtons shared a look, then grunted at each other with a series of short jerks of their heads.

Flynn found himself snapped around, his face smashed against the shed, held there with a hand on the back of his head. The other brother searched him, finding nothing but a few maps, some matches, a handkerchief, and some coins. They grumbled to each other as Flynn grimaced and tried to earn his face enough freedom that he could breathe without inhaling the solid layer of smoke that had plastered itself over the shed.

They shoved his head against the wall again and released him, and he turned to see them pocket what little money they found, toss the maps away, and glare at each other.

They didn't speak, but Flynn could follow their brotherly conversation well enough. If the battery wasn't on him, then it must be in the tower. They didn't seem to care about why he would leave it behind or why he would leave the safety of the tower, but whys were not part of their job.

"Tell us how to get in," one ordered.

Flynn pushed himself straight once more, forcing every ounce of his rising nerves into a tight ball, using it to power his way through the next few moments. His fear was his own, private battery, the energy skittish and unpredictable.

The Stabbingtons waited as he raised an eyebrow and checked that his throat would work before he spoke, his words even and unconcerned. "Well, I could do that, but I'm not sure you'd really like it once I did."

They gave him blank stares.

"You see, there's a dozen rebels in that tower. They're armed to the teeth and they have more dynamite than I've ever seen in one place before. Pretty impressive stuff. And you know how rebels are. Kinda twitchy. Kinda trigger happy. I could show you the way in, but they'd blow this whole valley sky high without a second thought. You'd be dead. I'd be dead. The battery'd be buried under five tons of collapsed tower."

One Stabbington rolled his eyes. "Like we believe that."

The other scoffed. "There aren't any rebels."

"Quit wasting time."

Flynn sighed, which, given the new bruises burning their way into his stomach, stung like crazy. He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. He managed just enough of a smirk so they would notice it and think he was trying to hide it rather than drag it up by the roots.

"Of course. You're right. There's no tricking you two brilliant gentlemen. Gotta try though, you know. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Did the whole thing entirely by myself." He looked around at the destruction of the camp, his chest swelling with pride (which hurt and almost made his breath catch before he pushed on). "I single handedly took down most of Corona's forces: their air fleet, their chameleons, their camp. Pretty impressive, don't you think? Yep. I'll tell you how to get in, and you two go on up. You shouldn't meet any resistance at all. Scout's honor."

This confused the Stabbingtons.

Flynn focused on keeping his smirk in check.

The brothers scowled at each other. One grunted and shook his head. The other chewed his tongue and nodded. They decided that this story was definitely a lie, but they didn't mind murdering a dozen fictional rebels.

"Tell us how to get in."

"Just getting in's not good enough. The battery's still hidden in there and you two will never find it."

His back hit the wall again before he realized the blow was coming.

"Tell. Us."

"You need my help. You'll never get past the booby traps without me and my friends will never let you in alone. You may be well armed and blood thirsty, but they've been planning this for years and they've dug in deep. You need me or you'll never get the battery."

The Stabbington in his face glared. Flynn clung to his cool, emphasizing his point with a smirk and a patronizing nod of his head. If they killed him, Rapunzel would die.

He couldn't let that happen.

"You need me _alive_. And it might serve you better to get on my good side. Just a suggestion."

A suggestion they weren't going to go for, but a tried and true method of bargaining was to demand something outrageous for the buyer to reject so the settling cost sounds reasonable and they can feel in control.

Of course, in this case, they _were_ in control, but Flynn needed every bit of self delusion he could muster.

The Stabbington dropped him in disgust and stood back a step to confer with his brother again in silence. One of them cracked a grin that made Flynn's skin crawl and a moment later an identical smirk eased onto the second brother's face. They needed him alive, but only until they found the battery. They needed him alive, but he didn't need to be in one piece to give directions. He didn't need his good looks or his fingers or both arms.

They shifted their bulking stances into something more at ease, looking pleased with themselves. Even though they weren't looming over him any more, the threat was just as plain. They were cats toying with their meal. "Show us how to get in."

Flynn swallowed, the knot in his stomach growing so hard and cold it was hard to speak. "Alright. This way."

A hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"The tower is _that_ way."

"Yes," he said, pointedly removing the hand from his shoulder. "And the tunnel to get into the tower is _this_ way."

"If you try anything-"

"You'll break my nose, yeah. I get it."

"Don't get fresh."

"Me? I don't know if you've noticed, but my nose is amazing. Do you seriously think I'd do something to ruin my profile?" He turned his head to show off said profile, resulting in an eye roll and a shove to get him moving again, this time in the general direction of the non-existent secret tunnel.

He headed back in the direction of the siege towers, back towards the crowd and the chaos. Maybe in the smoke he could lose them, but realistically there was no way that would work. But they might then turn to the tower without him and find their own way in. If they took the battery there would be no saving Rapunzel. If they found Rapunzel there was no telling what they'd do to her - flat out murder her or torture her in hopes she'd wake up and tell them where the battery was. They might even kidnap her and use her for her weird, magic healing hair powers.

He had to not only lose them, but incapacitate them. And he was running out of time.

The smoke had grown thicker. The whole clearing had grown hot as an oven from the slow, steady burn. It felt as if the ground were boiling beneath his feet, and given the density of the smoke, it was almost impossible to see that this wasn't true.

The Stabbingtons stayed close, breathing down the back of his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, it was as if they grew taller, shadowy figures stalking him in the gloom. He couldn't hear their footsteps over the shouts, but he imagined he could. He couldn't feel the heat of their stares, but he imagined that too.

Sweat clung to him, and he couldn't tell if it was from the heat or the stress.

He decided to blame the heat and considered pulling off his coat. He'd have a better range of motion if he caught a chance to escape. He also wouldn't blend in as well.

An idea started to form in the back of his mind.

They passed the first fallen siege tower, now collapsed in a heap of charred, scraped planks and black ash. The soldiers had abandoned the ruins to move onto the next tower, still alight and crackling. They swarmed around it, throwing buckets of water and beating at it with anything they could get their hands on. Part of the tower snapped, crumpled, and collapsed, sending up a cloud of sparks, sending the soldiers nearby leaping out of the way.

For a moment they had to move through a crowd, all dark figures that blurred in and out of the smoke until their mass movements caused the smoke to clear ever so slightly.

Flynn let himself be jostled slightly to the side, and heard a grunt from a Stabbington as he was bumped as well. Now with a three step lead on the brothers, Flynn spun on his heal, pointed at them and sent up the loudest shout he could.

"Oh my God! Enemy spies! They did this! They're after the battery! Get them!"

Startled responses grew from the crowd, first one, then another. Another and another. Building in volume. Growing in confidence. Turning from surprise to anger to determination.

He had a glimpse of one Stabbington's startled face, and the Stabbington caught a hint of his grin, then the battle erupted. A mass of soldiers, whose numbers Flynn couldn't count in the chaos, surged past him and attacked like a great wave on the ocean to crash down upon the brothers, who drew their weapons and set themselves against the new threat.

All attention diverted, he ducked away, pushing past forms running the opposite direction, moving from the scene with all haste as the shouts grew and the battle crashed and burned, fading as he ran until it blended with the rest of the destruction.

Coughing and panting, he slumped against the side of a tent, once again back in the dark vacancy of the camp. He'd lost track of where he was, where he was heading, but he let himself double over, gripping at the lingering pain in his gut.

He squeezed his eyes closed and fought for control, then hissed through his teeth and straightened.

He was running out of time.

Setting his jaw, he started off again. This time maybe out of the clearing to where the generals had probably evacuated? At least out to where there was less chaos and someone could take a second to give him directions.

He made it three paces before an icy blade slid under his jaw, jerking him to a halt. He swallowed, looking out of the corner of his eye, the blade scraping against his throat.

Someone was behind him, he could feel them now, the pressure against his shoulder, the heat. They had hidden themselves in smoke.

He expected a soldier, and calmed his nerves by reminding himself that capture was exactly what he wanted.

He wasn't expecting the voice in his ear, familiar and cold and dangerous. A voice like smoke, that made his stomach sink.

"So. You've been inside my tower."


	17. Chapter 17

Flynn swallowed. He really hadn't believed Rapunzel when she'd hinted that her mother was violent. He thought her mother would be angry, and he knew she'd make Rapunzel's life miserable and possibly kick Flynn out of the tower before he was healed and he'd die that way, but he'd never thought she'd pull a knife on him.

Then again, looking at their burning surroundings, she probably had reason to be ticked.

He tried to turn his head to look at her, but the knife bit into his throat, her free hand clawing into the back of his jacket, poised to yank him back into place as if that could hold him still.

"Gothel, right? I'm afraid I'm not making the best first impression here," he said.

"You're certainly not."

"Maybe if you let me turn around we can have a civilized conversation."

"I doubt that."

She had a point. She wasn't very civil.

"You know, you're not making a great impression either."

She scoffed, a snort that sounded more musical than it should have.

"We should start over. I think we could really get along." Lies. "We have some common interests. Common goals."

She stiffened. "Such as?"

"Keeping Rapunzel alive."

He could practically feel her fury, like she was sizzling in her own skin, the knife trembling against his throat. "What did you do to her?"

"_I_ didn't do anything."

She paused, letting the words sink in, and she took a deep shaking breath that added to the slight trembling of her words. "What did you do to her?"

Flynn set his jaw and glared at the empty space before him. "She's been poisoned by a chameleon."

She gasped and for a moment he thought she might scream and slit his throat right then.

"You've killed her!"

"No!" Except, yes, in a way-

"You brought these men here!"

"They brought themselves. That's what all the horses are for."

"They're here for you. And they can have you!"

"See," he said, trying desperately to calm her, trying not to let his own guilt get the better of him. "Common goals. I'm on my way to turn myself in."

She made a sneering noise as if she didn't believe him.

"Look, I turn myself in. In return for my surrender, a doctor goes up and fixes Rapunzel. The empire gets their battery back. I get executed in front of a firing squad. And you and Rapunzel go back to your messed up lives in your tower. Everybody wins." Except for him. And Rapunzel.

"I will NOT let anyone else touch her!" It only then seemed to occur to her that he might have touched Rapunzel. He could feel her anger boil up to a new level, and he knew he had to diffuse the situation as quickly as possible and pretend he hadn't picked up on her meaning. It wouldn't help his state of mind to remember anyway.

"If you don't let a doctor near her, she'll die. And soon."

Gothel trembled in rage, then ripped the knife from his throat, shoving him away. Stumbling, he caught himself on a tent and turned slowly to face her, rubbing his neck, where there was now a freely bleeding nick against his Adam's apple.

He hadn't actually seen Rapunzel's mother before. He'd expected her to be older. He'd expected her to look a bit like Rapunzel.

She stood, staring at the ground, her eyes darting back and forth as if she could read a solution scrawled in the dirt. She gripped at her hair, looking crazed as she still held the knife in one hand far too close to her eye.

Flynn straightened and cleared his throat.

"I know you want to keep her safe," he said slowly. "I do too. She's a good kid. And I know people will take advantage of her. But she_ needs_ help and you have to let me go get it for her. Just don't tell them about the hair and they won't know. It's not like they'd guess something like that."

Shocked eyes snapped to his face and she visibly jerked away from him.

"You-"

He had only a moment to register the change, from threatening him with a knife to something actually dangerous. He only had a moment to realize he'd said the wrong thing.

Her face contorted, looking wild and violent and monstrous. "_You_!"

She flew forward, slashing the knife at his face. And he ducked, jerking to side, throwing himself back to avoid a second and third swipe.

"Whoa!"

She kept coming, swinging and slashing and crying out with a sound between a snarl and a hiss. He bashed into the side of the tent, stumbling when the fabric gave beneath his weight instead of helping him to right his balance. He swerved the other direction, blocking stupidly with his forearm and earning himself a slice through his sleeve. He kept retreating. Back and back and back.

He was unarmed and she was crazy and his side was screaming as loudly as his attacker. He was too surprised to grab at an advantage, and he couldn't even think of an advantage to snatch.

What the hell? How did he get into a knife fight with this girl's mom?

Another swipe, another dodge. She was holding the knife strangely, backhanded, which shouldn't have worked for her, but definitely did.

He bumped into a cart, which shuddered and rolled backward, dislodging a few boxes, their contents spilling onto the ground and catching beneath his boots. He ducked, the cart slipping out from behind him as it rolled and his body found itself in a oddly controlled fall, his arms braced to either side, his legs giving out beneath him. With a dull thunk, the knife embedded into a wooden crate where his face was a moment before. Gothel screamed in surprise and tugged on the knife, which held tight.

Seizing his chance, Flynn slipped to the side, circling around the struggling woman, bracing himself to fight again.

Which was stupid. He should run. Since when did he stay and fight?

She ripped the knife free with a shower of splinters and spun to face him, her cloak swirling around her, her hair flying. Her breath came in deep, angry pants, and she snarled at him, readying her knife once more.

"I'll kill you!"

"Lady, death threats really don't work on me."

This only enraged her further, and she was after him again. He dodged more easily now. She was crazed and that gave her strength and an unpredictability that made her dangerous, but this was new to her and her moves were avoidable. He retreated back step by step, dodge by dodge. It occurred to him that he was wasting time. It occurred to him that she was leaving an obvious opening and he could easily aim a kick to her chest and bring this mess to an end.

She deserved it, the witch. But Rapunzel's disapproval of such an action stopped him.

"You there! What are you doing?"

Flynn didn't bother to look over his shoulder to face the shout. He needed all his attention on not getting sliced to ribbons. And, given his luck, if he turned around, it'd turn out the soldiers were shouting at some other fool who'd gotten himself in a knife fight.

He only heard the running footsteps as they passed right by him and a horde of soldiers appeared from the smoke, bursting into existence just an arm's length away. Someone grabbed his arm. Gothel screamed. Flynn was shoved and pinned and turned about until he lost all sense of direction. He could see only darkness and smoke and the muffled flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. The shuffling of boots and grunts of struggle rolled just beneath the sharp reality of his breath and the discomfort of his arm twisted behind his back.

He was spun again to face a frowning guard whose face was striped with soot and sweat, and the scene before him took shape again. Two guards held Gothel, who still struggled, lashing out and snapping as if she could take someone's face off with her teeth. Another guard held her knife, inspecting it quizzically.

The soldier in front of him barked out a question and Flynn's attention snapped back to his face. "What the hell's happening here?"

Flynn straightened as much as he could, tugging his disheveled jacket back into place. The soldier stepped back enough to let him, eyeing him warily. The man wasn't restraining him after all, but more like holding him up since he was stumbling and dizzy and his arm was actually bleeding pretty badly now that he could look at it.

And this was the moment of truth. What he'd set out to do. But now the coward in him hesitated. It now took every ounce of courage and stupidity to start talking.

"I'm Flynn Rider. I'm here to turn myself in and hand over the battery, but I have demands. You need to take me to whoever's in charge right now."

The soldier blinked at him. The guards holding Gothel went still to stare at him. Even Gothel looked shocked. In the stillness, the roar of the fires sounded subdued, as if they were listening, as if they were granting him space to have his words heard, as if now that he'd turned himself in, they could fade, their purpose complete.

"You're...My God."

Gothel surged, pulling herself free from the men holding her, who in their distraction had loosened their grip. They stared at her now like they'd had enough today and couldn't possibly process more or deal with anyone's snarling mother. One reached for her again, without the conviction to do much, but moving because deep down he knew he was expected to do so.

Before he could touch her, Gothel shot one last burning glare at Flynn, and twisted away, disappearing into the darkness with a swirl of her cape, the smoke curling back over her path, reclaiming the space in which she had stood.

"Who was that? Don't just stand there. After her."

The soldiers rushed off into the dark, but they all knew it was useless. The guard in front of him turned back and the hand holding him steady by the shoulder seemed to realize what it was doing and shoved him back against a tent, the motion emphasizing his repeated question. "Who was that?"

The shove was entirely unnecessary if you asked Flynn. His side screamed again and he turned his cringe into a frown of irritation. "She lives here."

"Ah. Your accomplice."

Flynn rolled his eyes. "Yeah. My accomplice who wants to stab me repeatedly and shriek at me."

The soldier shrugged. "I imagine that most people want to do that to you, accomplice or not."

"Nice."

"Or maybe she's mad you're turning in the battery. Where is it? Hand it over."

"I don't have it on me."

The soldier's eyes narrowed.

"Look, you want it? Then take me to your general. Let's go. Chop chop."

"How do I know this isn't a trick?"

"The greatest trick. First I turn myself in. Then you execute me. Ta dah! You'll all be amazed by how quickly I bleed to death. It'll be like magic. You'll be very impressed."

The soldier narrowed his eyes and shoved Flynn again. "You turn yourself in, then your accomplice runs off with the battery when everyone's distracted."

Flynn stared at him a second, unsure how to proceed with someone so annoyingly obstinate. "Would it help clear things up if I told you she's my crazy lady friend's mom?"

"No."

"Hmm. Well. Then I guess you have a choice. Drag me in and take me to your general and claim the glory of being the man who finally caught Flynn Rider, or throw me loose and let me go free because this is clearly a cunning trap and you're clearly too smart to fall for it."

The soldier thought about this a moment, then pulled his rifle down from his shoulder to aim it at Flynn's chest. After a moment he nudged the barrel against Flynn's shoulder, getting him to raise his hands in surrender and turn. Then with the gun pressing between his shoulder blades, they marched through the valley and away from the fire.

"Don't try anything funny."

"You sure? Then you're missing out. I'm a riot." But as he put one foot in front of the other and the smoke gradually cleared, Flynn swallowed and noted that nothing about this was funny.


	18. Chapter 18

Out of the valley, the temporary army structures surrounded by smoke gave way to temporary army structures surrounded by trees and he could just make out the brightening sky as dawn approached. He could finally take a breath of clean air, and immidiately he started caughing.

Guards joined their parade as they marched, falling into step around Flynn and taking hold of his arms and shoulders. They dragged him into a tent with a rippling flare of heavy cloth as they burst their way in. Before he could take in his surroundings, they shoved him to his knees, hands on his head and shoulders pressed him into the ground, dirt biting into his face as his neck screamed against the unnatural folding of his spine.

His instincts surged to fight back, to shrug the hands away, to run, but he forced himself to hold still, to calm his breath, to listen. This was what he wanted and he wouldn't ruin it by fighting.

"We searched him. He doesn't have the battery, and he's not armed."

He guessed that they would bring him to some blunt, burly general, but the voice that answered was feminine. He was reminded of Rapunzel. "And his chameleon?"

"No sign of it, ma'am."

The woman hummed, then Flynn could hear soft footsteps as she came forward. The men holding him tensed, their grips tightening in his jacket and his hair, against his arms and the collar of his shirt.

Abruptly the hands fell away and he took a breath to settle the protesting cramp in his shoulder before raising his head. He was met with Rapunzel's eyes.

No. Not Rapunzel's. He blinked and refocused on the queen. God, he must be going crazy.

"We meet again, Mr. Rider."

"Hey."

The corner of her mouth quirked with a kind of harsh amusement. "The major says you have something to say."

He straightened his spine as much as he could while still kneeling. "I have demands."

The major snorted behind her, but the queen remained impassive. "You're hardly in a position to bargain, Mr. Rider."

"I know where the battery is and you don't. I think that's a pretty good position."

"We know it's in the tower. It's only a matter of time before we find it."

"That's true. But my way is faster and it'll get us both what we want."

"Cutting a deal will hardly get you leniency."

"I don't expect it."

She tilted her head to the side and considered him a moment. "State your demands."

"There's a girl in the tower. She was poisoned by one of your chameleons. Send a doctor and heal her. My chameleon will let you in. I think you've already met him."

The queen didn't flinch, but the major behind her turned bright red with anger. "That creature is a menace! It's a trap. They'll have an ambush planned the moment we enter the tower."

"What would I get out of killing a bunch of doctors?" Flynn shouted. "Use your brain."

"I am, you worthless piece of-"

"Gentlemen." The queen held up a hand, signaling an instant silence. "Continue, Mr. Rider. How are we to get into the tower."

"Tell the chameleon you've brought a doctor and he'll let you in. He's freaked out that she's so sick and he'll let you heal her, but don't expect him to be happy if you try anything funny. He'll tell you where the battery is, once she's healed."

"And what about you?"

"You can do whatever you want with me. You get the battery, she gets to live. That's it."

"Why should we aid one of your friends?"

"She had nothing to do with this. She just lives in the tower and I took her hostage. She was a brat and a pain and now she's_ dying_."

"You would trade your life for someone you met less than a week ago. How noble."

He rolled his eyes. "Look, do you want the damned thing back or not? This is the deal."

The queen turned away from him to adress the major. "Throw him in irons. I want a guard of six men on him at all times. We know he has collegues, so be prepared for a resuce attempt. If he's here it means something's gone wrong in the tower, and this may be our only chance to catch them without a counter attack prepared. We're wearing them down and we should strike quickly."

"It could also be a trap, ma'am," the major said.

"It could," she agreed. "But this is an odd time for the rebels to change tactics. We will be prepared for deception, but we wont let this opportunity slip away. I want the wrecking balls ready within the hour."

"Wreking balls?" Flynn tried to stand, but hands pushed him back. "You're going to bring down the tower? You can't. You'll kill her."

"Mr. Rider, you have given us no reason at all to believe a single word you say. Even if this girl exists and even if she is injured, I'm not putting my people at risk to save the life of someone who helped you try to rip my empire to pieces."

"She didn't have anything to do with the battery. I dragged her into the whole thing. She's innocent. She had nothing to do with it."

"She harbored a traitor."

"She didn't know I was a traitor. And like I said, I took her hostage."

"Take him away."

"No!" He lurched forward, grabbed instantly by the soldiers behind him. He'd thought this would work. He'd thought he could do something. "We're running out of time." For the first time in a long, long while he wanted to set things right. He needed to set things right. "You have to save Rapunzel!"

Everyone froze. It was as if his words were fish hooks that caught at their chests and yanked at their attention. The queen's eyes widened, her face turning pale. She snapped her head to face him and pinned him with a look so sharp and fierce that he would have shrunk back had he any idea what was happening.

"Who?"

The question was simple, but there was a weight and an urgency hidden in that simplicity and he could feel the guards behind him waiting with racing hearts and baited breath.

He couldn't fathom what their issue could be and shrugged it off in his haste and fear. "The girl in the tower! I told you! She doesn't have much time."

The soldiers tightened their grip on his shoulders as the queen came forward again and bent to lean close to him, shrewdly searching his eyes. That flare of familiarity lit again in his mind. "Describe her."

The major gasped. "Ma'am! You can't-"

She held out a hand to silence him, still pinning Flynn with her overly green eyes. "Speak quickly, Mr. Rider."

Flynn remembered her face lit with the green tinge of the battery the last time they met. It called to mind Rapunzel, standing in her bedroom, staring down at the battery in her hands, face filled with awe as green swirls of energy twisted about her wrists.

"Skinny little thing. Too much blonde hair. Great big goggles. Makes watches. Doesn't get out much. And, oh yeah, the whole dying thing."

"How old is she?"

"Late teens?"

Rapunzel's mother had been so afraid of someone seeing her. She'd been terrified. She'd been dangerous.

"Her eyes. What color are they?"

The queen's eyes were all he could see, demanding and authoritative and so very much like Rapunzel's, and he answered automatically as a part of his mind wondered if the queen also had secret healing abilities. "Green."

It was like his blood stopped pumping through his veins, as if he hung suspended, staring into the queen's face as a great revelation wrapped around him, poised to break across his mind. Something clicked. Shifting from an anticipatory and off center state to resolve itself with perfect clarity. A gear clicking into place in one of Rapunzel's watches.

The queen's daughter had been stolen, and Rapunzel looked like the queen, and the battery hadn't burned her.

His face slackened and fear scraped across his heart.

"She- She- Oh my God."

The queen stood abruptly with clipped orders for her men. "Take a team of doctors. And your six finest shots. Bring her here at once."

"But ma'am, surely it's a trap! He's lying! Fabricating a story about his magical transformation through the power of love and- and- and-" The major waved his hand as his speech deteriorated into stutters.

What nonsense. The transformation thing, okay, he'd give them that, but it was more a perfect storm of variables at which Rapunzel was the center, rather than entirely her doing. And, yeah, when she wasn't being obnoxious and crazy, she was kinda cute and kinda sweet and in desperate need of some affection, but he'd hardly call that love. He'd only known her a few days and she'd spent that time lying to him and keeping him prisoner.

And now he had to save her.

The queen seemed to think this was a stupid interpretation as well and crossed her arms over her chest. "Then tell your men to be prepared for a trap. This is far too serious an accusation to ignore."

"I have to protest, ma'am."

"I don't need to remind you that if we don't find someone else with enough royal blood to fuel the battery, we'll lose its power eventually anyway. I don't need to tell you what will happen to the empire," she snapped. Then she turned away from Flynn to face the major. He shrunk back under her glare. "I don't need to tell you what I would do o see my daughter again."

The major had trouble finding his voice again, and his voice sounded weak and defeated. "Your enemies know of this weekness. They'll use it without any sense of chivilry."

"Good for them, and their strategic brilliance to remember that I'm a mother. You have your orders."

Flynn kind of liked the queen's sarcastic streak, even if he was still upset that she hadn't just taken his bargain and had completely dismissed his plan, even though he was annoyed that he'd needed Rapunzel to come save him again. And even if some rational part of him could recognize the major's concerns as valid, Flynn had to admire the queen's ability to throw her weight around and do exactly what she wanted without giving a shit about what anyone else thought.

The major gave up with a slump and a sigh and a "Yes, ma'am." Flynn smirked at him, and the man bristled but didn't say anything.

"Now take Mr. Rider away. Give him a quiet place to pray that things in the tower are exactly as he says they are." The queen didn't look at him as she spoke, already heading towards a table covered in maps on the far side of the tent.

The guards hauled Flynn to his feet by his elbows, spun him around, and shoved him towards the door.

"Watch out for her mom. She's running around here someplace. I fought with her earlier. She'll put up a fight if you try to take her."

The queen still didn't look at him. "So now you feel the need to give information about a counter attack. Interesting."

Flynn frowned, but didn't come up with a response before he was shoved outside and would have to shout it, breathless and undignified, over his shoulder.


End file.
